


love song for the admiral

by klickitats



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cullen being cranky, F/M, Grey Wardens, Josie being a badass, Lyrium Withdrawal, Pride and Prejudice elements, Slow Build, The Winter Palace (Dragon Age), Verbal Sparring, break-ups
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-19 09:43:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 177,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3605460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klickitats/pseuds/klickitats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She spins, plucking strings, matching wits and words, an admiral who will never send ships of her own."</p><p>In which Cullen quits lyrium, falls in love, plays chess, falls out of love, finds himself a fool, and goes to war with Josephine Montilyet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. knight-lieutenant

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Cole's delightful thoughts on the ambassador, my love of Cullen being a cranky, smirky bastard, and my even greater love of the flawless Josephine Montilyet.

Evening lies so well on Skyhold, the bright constellations settling above the dark mountain peaks like a starry crown. Trevelyan says as much, and Cullen chuckles, his back resting against the stone. She looks out into the white valley below, over the frozen river and the jagged cliffs. Cullen is watching the Chargers attempt to see who can do an Antivan cartwheel the quickest outside the tavern door. The ground is slick with frost and ice; the Chargers are spectacularly drunk.

He leans over, presses his lips to Trevelyan’s head. Her auburn hair falls to her chin, the strands catching when a cold night breeze slides between them. She leans against him, cheek against his shoulder. Krem manages a spectacular back flip but slips straight on his arse on the landing, and Bull’s roar of approval nearly echoes.

 _I am happy_ , Cullen realizes. It doesn’t shake the earth, but it makes his ears go red. How strange. Here, of all places. How _fantastic._

“Why are you smiling like that?” Trevelyan asks, an eyebrow arched. He kisses her temple.

“Nothing,” he responds. But he’s still smiling.  
  
~~~

At the war table, Josephine has to clear her throat three times to get his attention.

“Commander?” she says, trying not to smile.

“Oh—sorry,” he apologizes, rubbing the back of his head.

“Now, now, Josephine,” Leliana murmurs, leaning over the map and sliding one of her pieces to the Fallow Mire. “The Inquisitor is due back today. The Commander is simply…very thoughtful.”

Josephine grins and Cullen sighs under his breath. “Let us refocus on the fact that the entire Exalted Plains is on fire,” he grumbles, resting his hands on the map. “Ghilan’nain’s Grove. This is yours?” He raises an eyebrow at Josephine. Her piece is ensconced by his soldiers.

“There is a coalition of nobles who wish to throw in with the Inquisition,” she says, not looking up from the letter she is scribbling on her tablet. “The Inquisitor would have them prove themselves by clearing the grove.” She bounces up thoughtfully on the balls of her feet, a sprite in blue and gold.

“It would be faster with our soldiers,” Cullen responds, his tone even to cover his annoyance.  

“Perhaps,” says Josephine, “but what do we get out of it other than a score of tired Inquisition soldiers?”

“A job well done. What does your way do?”

Josephine smiles her secret smile, with just a hint of white teeth. “ _Two_ jobs well done.”

Cullen sighs and runs a hand over his face and Leliana chuckles. “Children,” she says.  
  
~~

It’s three bells past midnight and there’s a knock at Cullen’s door. “Enter,” is his curt, automatic response. Trevelyan stands there, no shoes, wrapped in a blanket, shaking.

“Inquisitor,” his tone gentles, he stands at his desk and she comes to him immediately. “Are you all right?” he murmurs, running his hands up and down her arms.

“Bad dream,” she says, a humorless, dry chuckle. Bad enough to send her out of bed and across the stone with _no shoes._ Cullen lifts her up onto the edge of his desk so her bare feet are off the stone, and then sits carefully in his chair. He takes one of Trevelyan’s feet into his hands, rubbing the soles with his gloved hands.

She tells him. It takes until the first pinks of dawn are creeping up the mountains.

The face of a templar she’d grown up with at the circle in Ostwick, lingering in the Fade. Cullen has always thought she has been steady around templars for a mage.

“He was a recruit,” she murmurs, feet warmed to Cullen’s approval and sitting in his lap. She is wrapped in the blanket and his cloak, and he is armored—it is still the longest and the closest they’ve been. He runs his thumb back and forth over the knuckles of her hand, waiting. “I was an apprentice. Same age. I guess—I’d been there a couple years before him, but we were both fourteen when we met.”

His name was Arram. Knight-Lieutenant Arram. A tree made flesh, she said, and jet black hair he’d always wanted to keep long. He could use a sword and a shield, but he was a marksman, and good enough the knight-commander lent him to the hunters a handful of times a year.

 _He was kind._ The way she says it sounds like the truth of it could fill half the tomes in Skyhold’s library. The top of her head nuzzles under his chin. _He made my life safe. He was my templar._

“What happened?” Cullen’s voice is low, as though speaking in normal tones will disturb the quiet hours of the night. He can’t lie—it’s to press down his panic as much as everything else. _Do not add jealousy to of the dead to your list of failings_ , he tells himself in a curt voice he only reserves for soldiers who laze off practicing their footwork. _You are not even a templar anymore._

“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “But he’s gone. When we were separated, he was taking a group of mage children to Starkhaven, and then heading to the Conclave.” Ostwick had been rent into many parts after the Circles dissolved. “One of my fellow enchanters said she’d spoken with him the morning of—of all this.” She flexes her hand; the Anchor hums a soft glow in response, then quiets.

“When I see him in the Fade—the demons wear his face,” she confesses. “Or his eyes are—just ashes.” She squeezes her eyes shut tightly, and he tightens his arms around her, the pangs of his own heart long forgotten.

“He is safe,” he tells her. “He is at peace. And you are making the world a kinder place in his name.”

~~~

It starts with a letter from one of Leliana’s agents. A cell of templars in the Hinterlands has been keeping the village well-supplied with meat for the refugees. They are their own men, splintered from the Chantry long before Corypheus dug his claws deep into the order.

“They’ve taught the refugees how to secure their own game,” reads Leliana from the letter. “They want more to do.”

Cullen takes the letter from her hand, reads it over. “Would they come here?” he asks.

“Another band, like the Chargers?” inquires Josephine. Cullen inclines his head slightly. “Good,” she says. “There’s more than enough work to do.”

“Can’t you shake a bag of gold out the window?” smirks the commander, “and find some more nobles to build bridges?”

“I’ll try that next time,” says the diplomat. “Perhaps they’ll bring some hair pomade that doesn’t give out in the sun.”

Cullen immediately touches the back of his head with a gloved hand.  
  
~~~

The Inquisitor has been back from the Forbidden Oasis for less than a day when they’re gathered around the war table again and a scout barges in, an arm clasped to her chest.

“Inquisitor,” she says, heaving. “Templars at the gate.”

Trevelyan’s eyes go wide and Cullen says quickly, “They’re from the Hinterlands. Not allied with the Venatori.” His hand is on her arm. She nods and grabs her staff anyway.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” is her answer, and she nods to the scout. “Go let them in. Leliana, give me archers on the battlements.”

They swish and sprint out of the war room, sliding to their places as easy as keys into a lock. Leliana flies up to the tower and Cullen notes archers in place along the tips of Skyhold. He follows Trevelyan, Josephine in tow. They flank her like two chess pieces protecting the queen. They wait at the top of the steps.

A group of templars come through the gate—less than twelve, but a hardy group. Their armor is dotted with blood and dust from the road, and it catches the light gloriously. The sight of it takes Cullen’s breath for a moment. _You used to do this_ , says that rough voice at the back of his mind, _before your place was behind the desk._

The templar at the head holds up a hand to halt them, takes off the helmet. It’s a man with hair black as obsidian, long and tied back in a knot. _That’s not regulation_ , is Cullen’s reflex thought before the Inquisitor drops her staff and the world goes still.

It clatters on the stone steps and then she _launches_ herself down, legs flying, taking the steps two or three at a time, practically sprinting and she is going to fall and kill herself—Cullen moves to follow but Josephine reaches on a hand, touches his arm, stops him in his tracks.

The Inquisitor finally reaches the sweet green lawn of the courtyard and bounds, _leaps_ into his arms, armor and all, her arms around his neck and the look of surprise on his face is like one who’s seen the dead. He is too tall to bend to her, so when he wraps his arms around her and closes his eyes in silent prayer (if it’s not prayer, then it’s something like it—Cullen knows that look on a templar’s face too well), he lifts her off her feet.

The whole courtyard is quiet. Cullen feels like a rift just opened out from under him, and one of those wisp things is curling a hand around his ankle to pull him down, down, down.

Josephine reacts first, stepping forward on the toes of her blue-slippered feet. “Inquisitor,” she calls, her accented voice as light as a dove in the sun, “unhand that man so the rest of us may meet him.”

The company laughs, and so does the man, the stillness broken. He sets her down. The Inquisitor turns—she is _weeping_ , notes Cullen—running her hands over her cheeks, laughing too, a broken, hopeful sound.

“This is Arram,” she says, “Knight-Lieutenant Arram, of Ostwick and the Free Marches.”  
  
~~~

Cullen’s caught up in her happiness, for a time. She kisses him that night when she visits him in that office, light and nearly chaste. She can’t stop smiling.

“It is a miracle,” she says. “The dead are not supposed to return.”

 _No,_ Cullen thinks quietly, rebelliously. _You are the miracle._ He runs his fingers through her auburn hair. _The rest of us are happenstance._

~~~

He debriefs Arram in his office, his hazel eyes hard and curt but never unprofessional.

He learns the knight-lieutenant never made it to the Conclave, that he and his fellow templars have been working tirelessly against the apostates in the Hinterlands ever since the Rift ripped open the sky.

“I was told to go there to find some missing templars,” he recounts. His voice is slow, low, endlessly reassuring. It is easy to see why mages find him trustworthy. “The Conclave blew, the rifts opened up, and my team and I, well…it didn’t make much sense to find them after that.” He shifts, doesn’t like to stand still. “Groups of apostates were running wild over the Hinterlands—not the mages in Redcliffe, mind you, but blood mages.” He looks like he would spit, but he remembers he’s in Cullen’s office.

“Admirable work,” Cullen says, and it’s true.

“Thank you, Commander,” is Arram’s reply. “I do not suffer ‘em to live.”

A Marcher through and through, then. He is _incredibly_ tall, lean-muscled all over and commands a bow as long as he is. Cullen, of rather average height, must tip his chin to look him in the eye. He rests his hands on the pommel of his sword.

“Welcome to the Inquisition, Knight-Lieutenant,” he says. “You’ve come to the right place for work.”

~~~

“How goes work on the Grove?” asks the Inquisitor. They’ve been at this for hours, and the end is finally in sight.

“Slowly,” says Josephine, “but the tenants and farmers of the duchy have taken up hammer and spade alongside the soldiers.”

“Truly?” says Leliana, fingering the tip of her chin. “How interesting.”

“Why?” asks the Inquisitor, and Maker, Cullen is glad somebody did.

“You’ve met Orlesians,” offers Josephine, putting down her tablet and candle. “The classes are rigid—upward mobility a thing of years of good luck and great strategy. To see a noble sergeant take up arms with a farmer as comrade, well…” She smiles, and it reaches all the way to her dark eyes. “It _is_ the end of the world, is it not?”

“So nice to see an upside to the rifts tearing apart the countryside,” sighs Cullen.

“They will tear them apart either way,” Josephine says, picking her table back up. “Whether we find a way together, or no.”  
  
~~~  
  
She takes Arram with her and Dorian and Bull to the desert. The morning before they leave, Cullen catches her inside the door of his office and kisses her long and hard, his hands tracing up the curves of her ribs. _Don’t forget me there,_ he wants to say. _Come back to me safe and whole._ He presses his lips to her forehead and lets her go.

~~~  
  
They are gone for a whole month. He plays chess alone, drills and drills his soldiers, spends hours contemplating the war table. Sleeps little, aches much, dreams constantly of deep shadows in the Fade.

~~~

Cullen sits in the courtyard garden, looking up at the stars. Mia loved old stories of knights and princesses when they were children; even more, she loved reading them aloud. An amusing form of torture, he supposed, but occasionally he had found himself enrapt in one glorious tale or another.

One, he remembers clearly: _The elf king Ristan found love as easily as sliding into the Fade in slumber: not at all, and then suddenly, all at once._

The story did not say that losing is exactly the same, but it’s a lesson Cullen learned well long ago. He has made it into a personal art form. Cullen’s lost countries, cities, positions, careers. Sleep. Faith. Peace. It all flies out of his fingers. People. So many people. Good, strong people, pulled out by fate or the sword or what have you until he is left sitting here, in this courtyard in the mountains, all alone.

When he thinks of the many scars that line his flesh, he can point to the ones he knew were going to happen. A rage demon stretching out a claw and he knew his shield would not rise fast enough. Watching a mage ready a fireball and his sword is still in the sheath. Knowing pain is coming, because that’s what warriors do: they anticipate.

She had shut the door and said, _Cullen_. And all his swords and shields and efforts would never come fast enough.

He is not angry at her—how could he be? She found the same gold as he, but in someone else. How can he be angry at her for finding someone more worthy?

_I will always care for you._

Cullen buries his heart beneath moss and permafrost. It is time to accept that it is has been so long since a good thing could _bear_ to stay in his life that it is not meant to happen. Not again. Not anymore. He is barren ground, rocky soil, not even bloody _rashvine_ would grow here—and metaphors are not Cullen’s strength.

He is empty.

The numbness is relief, in a way. Not even the lyrium can burn this way. It can gnaw at his bones, suck at the marrow, but it can’t scrape him clean.

His thoughts are traitorous. He imagines Trevelyan and her knight-lieutenant kissing in her quarters, looking up at the same sky on her balcony. Remembering a life already lived together. His lips touch her fingers. Her smile feels like a gift.

This is _ma_ _dness._ He gets up suddenly, but his legs are stiffened by the cold and he grabs the edge of a stone wall.

“Cullen?” Cassandra’s voice comes from the door leading to the shrine of Andraste. She regards him with her cool eyes. He sees them soften; she reads the writing on the wall well. That kills him more than anything.

She doesn’t offer any words of solace or comfort, just takes his arm and leads him back to his office. She goes up the tower with him, helps him rack his armor in his room.

“Sleep,” she commands, and Cullen obeys. “And for the Maker’s sake,” she adds, her tone petulant, “don’t blame yourself.”  
  
~~~

He wakes the next morning with the lyrium lighting up his nerves, raw and snapping and popping like embers in the fire. He can barely dress himself—can’t tell if it’s the late night, or the cold, or the loss, or—this slow anger building under his skin, the rough voice in the back of his voice saying, _You’ve nothing to offer, nothing to give._

He makes his way into the hall, where the day is only just beginning. The Inquisitor likes to meet at the war table early in the morning, before Skyhold is buzzing like a hive and the day takes them a thousand different ways. He opens the door that will lead through the hall to the war room when a scout interrupts him with a missive.

“Ser,” he says, bowing quickly. “Forgive me, but you’ll want to see this.”

Cullen takes the letter without a word and scans it—his vision is blurred at this hour, Maker’s mercy. “Explain, recruit,” he says curtly, irritation rising.

“The grove in the Exalted Plains,” says the scout. “All from the duchy have abandoned the project. Dust has settled on it for more than a week.”

“They just _abandoned_ it?”

“Seems like it, ser,” the scout shifts from foot to foot anxiously. “Not sure why. Infighting, perhaps? Ambassador Montilyet requested—“

“Ambassador Montilyet’s efforts,” Cullen growls, his voice low and rough, “deliver as many results as one would expect from arranging figures on a wedding cake—that is to say, somewhere between _irrelevant_ and _none at all._ ”

The world stills.

It’s a strange thing, saying something unforgivable. One moment, everything is the same—the next, well, not at all.

The hall is not full, not by any means, but there are enough bodies to and fro to have heard him. Cullen feels the blood drain away from his face. The scout plucks the missive from his hand, as though that’s enough to stop his mouth.

“Dismissed,” mutters Cullen, turning past the threshold and—there is Josephine, standing in front of her fireplace, staring at him. Her shoulders couldn’t have been more rigidly set than if she’d been standing there in plate. He cannot, for the life of him, read what’s in her dark eyes.

He opens his mouth (what could he even _say?_ ), but she’s quicker.

“After you, Commander.” Her voice, even and calm.

“I, uh, well—”

“I insist.” Her tone brokers no argument. Cullen ducks his gaze, rests a hand on the pommel on his sword, and marches on to the war room.

All the way there he hears the soft echo of her steps. He imagines each shoe, blue and small, witnessing the retreating shuffle of his boots.


	2. dalliances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josephine ruminates, plays Diamondback, and duels with the commander.

The war room—the heat at the heart of the Inquisition. Josephine always waits to light the candle on her tablet until they’ve all gathered—the spymaster, the commander, the Inquisitor, sometimes Cassandra. She wonders if they realize that they tune to it, steady as a clock—side conversations and small talk filling the room till match, strike, light, flame and their bodies instinctively draw to the table at hand.

It is better than a judge’s gavel, or the wave of a flag—just that one, small light, and then they can begin. When she was a girl, the strike of the candle meant evening, meant climbing into her mother’s lap and waiting for her to light the wick, to wrap her arms around her and begin murmuring a story. That’s all this is, at the end of the day. Josephine knows that like she knows all the kings and queens of Antiva, how many cobblestones lead up to her parents’ home in Antiva City, and how many marbles she has sitting in a soft, worn velvet bag in the second drawer in her room. All the details that make something true. The Inquisition is a story, and Josephine will only tell it perfectly, with dignity and heart.

And that means it must all start properly, with the lighting of a candle.

She and the commander are alone for only a handful of heartbeats before she can hear Leliana and the Inquisitor coming down the hall. The commander is turned to look out the window, his big shoulders set like iron. Josephine does not care. She tells herself this six times as she watches him out of the corner of her eye, sharpening her quill at the table. It is just another thing to be borne—borne and used at a later date, a moment to be collected and deployed.

He is not worth her gaze. Not today. Beneath her breast, her heart crackles in anger. A man, yes, filled to the brim with noble deeds and good intentions. A man she respects. But a fool. A fool to say such a thing.

And it hurt. Josephine does not admit such things where they may be taken from her. Their barbs are sharp but good natured. Their banter is necessary for honesty and sanity. But it hurt. It burns bright and hot in her veins—Josephine laughs easily, smiles easily, and finds pain in the same things just as frequently. _Mi cuore_ , she hears her mother every day, _my little heart, who feels so much and in every which way._

Suddenly Leliana and the Inquisitor are in the room, and Leliana’s musical voice is raised in high laughter, like the tinkling of a silver bell. The Inquisitor takes her place at the table, grinning and opening her mouth to retort.

The commander turns only slightly. Josephine has no patience today. Match, strike, light, flame.

“The grove?” says the Inquisitor, fingering a piece on the table.

The commander clears his throat. “The soldiers and farmers of the duchy have abandoned the project for at least a week’s time,” he answers. To his credit, he has evened his tone considerably.

“Really?” The Inquisitor’s eyebrows raise high. “Why ever so? Josephine?”

Josephine looks up from her tablet. “Freemen,” she says, her tone grave. “A last ditch effort to gather supplies and make a stand. They began raiding farms.” She doesn’t need to twist the knife, but she hurts for these people, these people who were _trying_ , who overcame a hundred years of class divides just as solid as the stone that made Skyhold. “Their homes burned, their families turned out on the run.” She shakes her head.

She can feel the very air change. She sees Leliana notice it too, in the way she shifts her gaze. Her friend never misses a breath. The commander sighs, softly but deeply, his hands resting on the pommel of his sword.

“Commander,” says the Inquisitor, her voice strong and low. “Send a unit to continue work on the grove until it is finished. I will go to the Exalted Plains myself on the morrow.” She looks up at Josephine, who nods. “I will clear out these Freemen from the plains myself.”

Leliana nods her approval. “Shall I send an agent or two?” she asks. “To scout out their foxholes? I imagine they leave a scorched trail but have spread out over the Dales.”

“That would be helpful.” The Inquisitor pinches the bridge of her nose, studies the board.

“Inquisitor,” begins Josephine, a dark eyebrow raised high. “There are three noble houses who had led the forces on the grove. Permit me to write to them.”

The Inquisitor looks a little confused. “Of course, Josephine. But—why?" 

“Will the Inquisitor not move swiftly enough for the satisfaction of your pen?” The commander inquires.

“They threw in with the Inquisition,” says Josephine, quill in hand. “I want them to know that within an hour of this news, we had a plan for their relief. I want them to know we are coming.” She considers the parchment before her, glances at the wavering wick.

The Inquisitor nods. “Let the people know.” The commander opens his mouth, but then closes it, shakes his head. “I will have men on their way to the dales before sundown,” is what he offers.

Josephine writes a note on the parchment, tiny dabs of ink staining her fingers. “We build our success, and all Thedas wants a piece of our reputation. We build from our failures, well…” She signs with a flourish. “All Thedas will seek shelter in our shadow, vengeance at our side.”

Leliana chuckles, and even the commander makes a noise. “Crow wisdom?” he asks, tone dually dour and sour. The Inquisitor grins, and the air has changed, in spite of it all. “You quote assassins, ambassador?” Her voice is bright and lovely as the sun.

“They are a national treasure,” says Josephine, the corner of her mouth arcing upwards at the way Leliana’s eyes crinkle, the sound of her friend’s laugh.

~~~

She supposes they look strange, hunched over this little table together next to the fireplace. The great hall is empty but for guards down by the throne, and Vivienne is out with the Inquisitor.

Across from her, Varric _tut-tuts_ and reaches out a hand expectantly. “Lemme see that hand,” he says. Josephine sighs and hands over her cards without pause. Her appointment with the delegates from Orzammar approaches soon and a knowledge of Diamondback seems like some good preparation. Dagna’s wildly re-enacted Dwarven histories are useful (if tangential), but tonight, the arcanist is putting the finishing touches on a new blade for Blackwall and Josephine desperately needs a refresher on the game.

“You should have played this one,” he says, holding up a card, “two hands ago.” He chuckles. “You daydreaming?”

Josephine sighs, sits back in her chair. “I suppose,” she says. If this is the one way she let show that today rattled her incredible focus, just for a moment, she’ll allow it.

“You hear about Curly and the Inquisitor?” Varric is not only a warm and steady presence, but his love for gossip gives Josephine’s a run for his money.

She nods. “I heard,” she indicates. The knowledge had provided some illumination on the commander’s behavior and quiet eyes for the day, though it certainly was no excuse.

Varric sighs. “Sad thing,” he says, shuffling cards. “That knight, he’s good people.”

“The knight-lieutenant seems an asset,” agrees Josephine. “I wonder…” she looks at the fire, her fingertips touching her chin. “They seemed so _right_ together.”

“Curly and the Inquisitor? Yeah, sure,” says Varric, cutting the deck. Something out of a fairytale, Josephine doesn’t stay. When Leliana had pulled her aside and whispered that finally— _finally_ —the commander had made a move (and on the battlements no less!), Josephine giggled wildly. The gentle teasing around the war table began immediately after, and, well—

It had just been nice, better than nice, for one of them to be so _happy._

Leliana broods now, in long moods of cold stillness. When she’s not flitting about Skyhold, she’s up in the tower on her knees, praying and praying. Cullen is a man of iron and leather and slow to smile. Much less to smirk, she’d allow, but to smile? Rare.

And then there’s her, Josephine who is here to negotiate the impossible, with no weapons but a smile and a carefully placed word.

She sighs. Varric glances up, and she knows his gaze softens.

“Somethin’ troubling you, Ruffles?” he asks.

“I just—well,” she says, pulling her gaze from the fire. “I thought they were—like the love you find in a novel.” She blushes a little, and Varric chuckles. “Really though—it seemed like the Maker himself had a hand in it. I just don’t understand.

“You sure you don’t?” The dwarf begins to deal cards. “Not all good things are meant to go together. Not all the time. I think—“ He pauses, and she watches him remember. “We all learn that, sooner or later.”

Josie does remember—being twenty four and the Antivan ambassador to Orlais, and meeting the captain of a merchant vessel that traded mostly in silk and muslin. The way her long blue coat had wrapped around her shoulders, the surprising softness in her eyes, the beguiling roughness of the callouses of her hands. They danced once, at a party, and then it was quick and easy as flames. Kisses that made the knees weaken, conversation that brokered a peace in Josephine after a long day of the Game. Marya, captain of The Silver Tide, a woman like sea foam and ocean storm made flesh. Being with her felt like tucking away from the world for a moment, this woman who called Josephine _my lady_ and offered her an arm on the street and murmured _my sun, my moon_ and _you, who bring light to the old shadows of my heart_ when they were alone.

They write letters, still—not often enough, but they do it. The echo of what might have been always leaves a familiar tinge. But Josephine could not wait in perpetual freeze for a captain who may not dock back at shore for a year or two. It hurt too much, like winding sharp wire around her ankles and wrists.  Ten and a half months and there they were, two people who had done all the Maker’s calculus of finding one another and finding, quickly, despite best efforts, the ledger did not tip in their favor.

“Yes,” says Josephine, picking up her cards and considering them with a raised brow, “I think I do.”  
  
~~~

For a solid week, Josephine dreams of ships. Steady vessels cutting through colossal waves. In one dream, she is cargo—not human, but a sheaf of silk rolled tightly and securely beneath the deck. In another, she climbs rigging to the crow’s nest and finds she has discovered a way to get above the clouds. And the last one, the one she has again and again, she is the ship—she feels every ache of the wood but each sweet slide as she overcomes one wave, and then another, and another, until she is free on the water in search of some epic tale—she wakes when the sun rises, blinking, salt in her eyes.

~~~

It has been three weeks. The Inquisitor is still gone to the Plains with Arram, Vivienne, and Cassandra. Josephine is at her desk when a scout brings her a missive.

To be fair—and Josephine always is—it has been a trying day. She and Leliana have been elbow-deep in talks all day on how to deal with Lady Forsyth of Tantervale, who refuses to trade with an Antivan _or_ a Chantry representative _or_ the military despite having coal mines untouched and unused for years burrowed under her land—that means the Orzammar talks must happen sooner and there’s something else she must add to the plate—one of her agents fell down a chasm running a message for a bann and broke her right leg in three places—a letter from her father announces an entire strain of grapes has died out on the vineyard—the cold of the keep has crawled up and down her legs all day, making her shiver and leave messy ink marks on her letter to the Marquis—

She is at the door to the commander’s office before she knows her feet have begun the journey. Her hand is on the knob and the door swing open before his customary, curt _come in_ has finished.

He has been pacing back and forth behind his desk, she observes, his hands behind his back. He blinks at her, surprised.  
  
“Ambassador?” he inquires, “Is there some way I can as—”

Josephine shuts the door behind her, closes the space between them and drops the missive on his desk. “Your soldiers,” she says, the edge of dryness creeping into her voice. She closes her eyes for a moment, soothes and smoothes it. The same feeling as if she were to adjust a hair back into place on her dark head.

Cullen picks up the missive, begins to read. Josephine knows what it says by heart— _Inquisition soldiers have turned away the men of local nobility, as well as peasants and farmers who have returned for the last leg of clearing the grove._

“I can draft a letter,” says Josephine, setting her tablet down on his desk as well. “Explain what’s happened to the nobility—they will forgive easily. A simple misunder—”

The commander clears his throat. “That won’t be necessary,” he says.

Josephine blinks in a moment of pure, earnest surprise. “Oh?” she replies. _Brilliant_ , she groans inwardly.

“These orders came from me.” The commander taps the missive with a gloved fingertip.

There is a moment of complete silence, and then—anger. _Match, strike, light, flame,_ thinks Josephine wildly, keeping her face and demeanor as still as frost on a Skyhold morning.

“From you?” she repeats. “Commander, surely I’ve misunderstood you.”

“Not at all,” he says. He balances his hands on his pommel, shifts his weight from side to side—not in nervousness, she knows, but in anticipation. “We’ve suffered immense delays already. There’s no time for…dalliances.”

“Dalliances?” Josephine rests her hands on his desk. “They seek to finish what they started.”

“They can go home,” says the commander plainly, slowly. A spark runs up Josephine’s spine—no one needs to speak slowly to her. “Protect their families, live their lives.”

“Commander,” Josephine begins, then pauses. Each word must be selected like a dart, a dagger, the slice of a sword. When she straightens a little, she can feel her mother’s gold necklace, the one that lies across her clavicle. _Strong as gold_ , her mother would say, _and just as peaceable._

 _Strong as gold, and just as peaceable,_ she repeats to herself.

“The sun rises,” Josephine says, “and a rift opens somewhere. The sun rises, and a demon screams into your village. The sun rises, and you take ill in the winter. The sun rises, and your crop is gone. The sun rises, and your village is gone.” She squeezes the edge of the desk. “Every day is new danger, Commander. To make a person’s decisions…”

“It’s necessary,” the commander says, “and for everyone’s benefit.”

“You cannot make a man’s choices for him,” returns Josephine.

“But I can make them for the forces of the Inquisition,” is his response. “This is faster, better, and we’ll have results—“

“We are rebuilding _Thedas_ ,” Josephine volleys. Her voice is strong as a sword. “We are not simply running about building bridges and sewing up rips in the Fade. It takes—more than this. This is not enough.” She looks around his office, the practice dummy in the corner, knives pincushioning it. She glances down at this desk—there’s a small wooden box open on the surface, its edges so well-worn it shines. A small blue vial and some tools, just as well used, lie inside. Cullen catches her looking at it and snaps it shut and throws it in a drawer. She can hear it hit the back. Red creeps up the back of his neck and the tops of his ears.

“Not enough?” he says, and she can hear the disbelief breaking through his voice. “Exactly what I’ve drilled and drilled and trained these soldiers to do—what they’ve _died_ doing, mind you, and what all those who camp outside Skyhold are prepared to do just as quickly for a rift, for a bridge, or for a hut in the Hinterlands on fire.” He grips the pommel of his sword and he _glowers_ at her. She has heard dignitaries call him the Lion of Skyhold; like this, she sees the resemblance perfectly. “None of that is enough for you. I understand.”

 _I have insulted his soldiers_ , she realizes, and despite that being far from her intent, she knows that matters little when a blow has hit. “Commander, I would not say—“

“Please,” he invites, his voice sharp, “I invite more rhetoric on how you would command an entire army, Ambassador, responsible for halting the end of the world.”

“What they do is more than enough,” Josephine says, evenly, peacefully, “It is not their service I question, Commander. It is our intention. It is the _reasoning_ behind turning away those who also bled in service of the Inquistion for so little a thing.”

“We have spent enough time trying to placate the whims of Orlais,” the commander nearly snarls.

“Is that what this is about?” Josephine says, folding her arms across her chest. “Your Fereldan distaste for Orlais?”

“ _Distaste?_ ” The commander looks at her as though she is mad. “They _occupied_ the country for a hundred years, they—“

Josephine raises a hand to stop his blustering. “A student of history, then, as well as a commander. They are still people. That is what I cannot understand—if we win this war your way…” She shakes her head.

The commander breathes through his nose. “What,” he says. “Finish.”

“If we win this war your way, there will be little left to salvage,” Josephine finally snaps, at the end of her wits. The commander’s office is _freezing_ , a cold draft gusting down from the loft above that makes her hold her arms more firmly. She sees her words hit him bodily, as though he’s taken a hit on his shield from Krem’s maul. And suddenly Josephine realizes that she has incited that which she often refers to as _a diplomatic incident_ , an _unfortunate communication_ , or in the words of the layman, _a mistake._

She presses on in spite of the embarrassment tinging the hairs on the back of her neck. She has said something nearly impossible to forgive. “I only mean to say,” and all her years of practice cannot keep her voice even and temperate, “that if we dash every alliance, burn every bridge, turn away every noble who knocks at our door—when we are done with Corypheus, Thedas will have another war to fight, only this time it will be brother against brother.” She exhales slowly. “We will have strife and war and this Inquisition will never end.”

She meets his eyes, and realizes that he is angry, and she is angry, and coming into this office was a mistake but it had to be done. This was a fixed point in time—an event impossible to change, no matter how much Tevinter magic or lyrium you could gather.

“What I care about,” the commander says slowly, each syllable touched with simmering rage, “is protecting the people. Keeping them safe. Making this world…safe.” He grips the pommel again, hard. “You…you _accommodate._ You _placate._ ”

“Given your past words,” says Josephine, her nails digging into the soft fabric of her dress, “your disdain for diplomacy is no revelation.”

“It is not diplomacy,” snaps the commander, “it is _playing house._ ”

Josephine’s eyes widen and she almost gasps. The commander burls on, a man who holds a battering ram and sees a weakness. “If we ended this war my way,” he growls, “at least we would end the war. If we attempt to _negotiate_ our way to Corypheus’ side, Ambassador, we invite the demons to our very beds.”

He looks out the window, looks like he could spit. “But at least the nobility,” he murmurs, “will feel _involved._ ”

Josephine takes a breath, reeling. The hurt opens a chasm between them, and they are both bleeding into it—two people who thought they were practicing with wood and have suddenly found out both have drawn steel instead. _How did this happen_ , she thinks, almost dizzy.

“You are a hammer,” she says, quietly, voice cold as water, “and see everything as a nail. If you save all Thedas, Commander, if—everything is sacrificed, every person offering help turned away, every house trying to take a stand denied—well.” She is just as iron as he is, her shoulders set with will nigh unbreakable. It is something people forget, because Josephine smiles often and would rather make people feel at ease than wary.

“You will find an empty world, at the end of it all.” Josephine meets his eyes, and is somehow still surprised at the depth of anger there—complicated anger, rage and sadness and shame all tinged together. He shows so little emotion, and now she finds herself privy to so much of it. “If I were to choose between the two, I would rather lose than fight for nothing.”

“That is because you do not know _the fight_ ,” he snarls.

“And you do not know the world,” Josephine says, and then it is over. She feels the moment end, long and hard though it was. She has no idea where it began or where it ended, and the hurt that simmers beneath her breast muddles everything unbearably. When she meets his eyes again, she reads the hard lines of his posture and the fury in his eyes and sees, at least, in this they are perfectly matched.

Josephine takes the missive off his desk, folds it under her arm. A dark hair has come undone from her braid and she tucks it behind her ear. She waits for a moment in the silence, waits because there is no end to this, turns on her heel and leaves his office. She leaves the heavy door open, walks down the path back to the hall, and knows exactly how he watches her with anger like a mountain—exactly how she would watch him, if it was he who was retreating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time writing Josephine, so I hope it was okay. Thank you so much for all your feedback! It's incredibly delightful and motivating.  
> tumblr: klickitats


	3. stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trevelyan comes back from the Exalted Plains, and Josephine and Cullen attempt an understanding.

Twelve hours after she returns from the Exalted Plains, Cullen is walking in stride with Inquisitor Trevelyan to the war room. They don’t speak—not out of tension or discomfort, but pure exhaustion. Trevelyan should (at least, Cullen wishes) get a week to recover from running all over the Dales for over a month. _Well, they’re still on fire_ , she’d told him with a wry grin and shadows under her eyes when she’d rode in that night. The knight-lieutenant had helped her dismount with a hand. _You did your best,_ he’d said, right before Cullen could.

Cullen didn’t sleep that night. The lyrium bit him hard, sinking cold teeth into his legs this time. He shook and ached under three furs. It wasn’t because when he closed his eyes and drifted briefly into the Fade, a desire demon with fingernails like needles murmured, _I can make you enough._ It wasn’t at all.

 _Andraste preserve me_ , he thinks, opening the door for the Inquisitor and following her over the rubble and down the long hall. The door to the war room is open, just a hair, and walking in he sees the spymaster and the ambassador engaged in conversation—intense, low, Leliana doing most of the listening. She touches Josephine’s arm and they both look up when Cullen and Trevelyan enter.

He pads over to his usual spot, resting his hands on the pommel of his longsword. He does not look at Josephine. Looking at her, remembering her dismissal of his soldiers—well. It was not something he could shoulder, or face, or bear upon his back. _Quit acting like a proud da_ , Varric had told him once as he watched them drill in the yard in Haven. They’d finally made a passable shield wall.

“Inquisitor,” says Leliana, a small smile on her face, “I thank the Maker you return to use safe and whole.”

“You knew I was coming,” says Trevelyan, rubbing her eyes but returning the grin. Leliana shrugs. “I thank him all the same,” she replies.

“It is always lovely to see you, Inquisitor,” the ambassador says, twirling a quill by the tip in her long fingers. “I am only sad to see you did not bring me back a _halla._ ”

The Inquisitor laughs, almost as though she was startled into it. Leliana cracks a smile. “Josie,” admonishes the spymaster, “you are incorrigible.”

“Varric tells me their horns are like velvet. Is it true?” the ambassador wonders, and for a moment Cullen is reminded of Mia and her omnipresent book of fairy tales.

“I mean…they looked soft enough?” Trevelyan struggles to remember, and the ambassador sighs.

“Very well. But Master Dennet and I agree on this point.”She raises an eyebrow and gestures with her quill. “We would like a halla. Please and _grazie._ ”

Cullen groans. “Have you been inside the stables?” he asks, head rolling in Josephine’s direction. His eyes still survey the pieces of the board. “If I showed you a map of Skyhold, could you even show me where they are?”

The Antivan is fingering a match, straightening the wick of the candle on her tablet. “Halla, Inquisitor,” she says, and strikes it, lighting the candle. The Inquisitor grins, refocusing on the many pieces lying before them. “I’ll do my best,” she promises.

 _I shall endure_ , thinks Cullen.

  
~~~

“Absolutely not,” he says, for the fifth time, eight hours later. Trevelyan is gripping the edge of the table, Leliana looks vaguely murderous, and the ambassador _is not even paying attention_ , scribbling a letter on the tablet that Cullen thinks may be a permanent part of her arm.  

“Commander,” begins Leliana, and Cullen tries to remember to breathe. The headache clawing into the back of his head makes his temples pulse, makes breathing itself a very trial. His palms are flat on the table, and he stares down at the pieces of their grand puzzle, adjusting to the rage manifesting in his very _spine._ They’ve been dueling at his for an hour.

“We should not even be discussing this,” he says, cutting her off, his voice a low growl. “You cannot consider it, Inquisitor. We are—we are too _young_ if this blade were to fall back on us. It would break the Inquisition.”

“Dramatics,” said Leliana. “Let Arl Wulff continue as he is—there is no need to alert him to our use of his information. I will ensure our manipulation is untraceable. We have done this a thousand times before—it is just another secret.” She folds her arms over her chest.

“So if we ally with a Venatori in the shadows, it erases all questions of morality,” is the bitten off reply deep within Cullen’s chest. “How the Maker has blessed the burning of our hearts.”

“Cullen, please,” says the Inquisitor, weary. She sits down in a wooden chair, her elbows on her knees, her head only a few inches above the map of the war table. “Let’s leave the Maker out of this.”

Both Leliana and Cullen turn their heads and raise their eyebrows in such a way that is nearly laughable. At least in this, today, they are on the same page. Normally, Cullen finds that his work complements Leliana’s, as well as the reverse. Reconnaissance and secrets save lives, the lives of _his_ men and women and soldiers. It is usually a simple thing to make their ways lie alongside each other.

“We should give him to Ferelden,” he says. “Tell them of his allegiances and they will find fault with him.”

“Give him to Ferelden, and we have lost a priceless source of information,” Leliana returns.

“We have no _control_ ,” says Cullen, “and we are breaking bread with the enemy. This is the price.” He closes his hand slowly into a fist on the table. He sighs. “I understand, Sister Leliana, I truly do, but this—it cannot be worth it.”

Leliana opens her mouth to speak and the Inquisitor holds up a hand. “Josephine,” she says, bone-tired, “Josephine. Advise?”

The ambassador’s dark head rises, regarding the three of them. Cullen notices, faintly, that she does not look at him. “You wish to expand this possibility to our connections? I thought you preferred it be our spies or our forces.”

“Anything,” says the Inquisitor with a wave of her hand. “What do you say?”

The ambassador’s eyes drop to the map, then back up to look the Inquisitor in the eye. “Ally with him,” she says, and Cullen feels Leliana relax next to him. His rage rises. The ambassador taps the feather of her quill at the corner of her mouth. “But with his knowledge.”

There is an extremely pregnant pause as all three of them regard the mad Antivan in the blue and gold. “You cannot be serious,” breathes Cullen. It is the first time he has looked her in the eye since their discussion four days ago.

“You want information,” she nods at Leliana, “and it sounds as though the commander wants none of this, but what I can promise is _accountability._ Arl Wulff is repentant.” She looks thoughtful. “He wanted the mages to depart from Redcliffe in the name of peace. He will be indebted to us. He will serve.”

“A double agent,” says Leliana. The dark-haired woman nods, looking satisfied. “He feeds false information at the behest of the Inquisition. If he betrays us, he is the traitor—not us.”

Cullen clenches the edge of the table. “Absolutely not,” he says.

The Inquisitor sits back in her chair, fingering her chin. “Useful,” she says. “You think if he turned tail, we wouldn’t take a fall?”

The ambassador shakes her head. “He won’t,” she reassures. “I’ve met him. He’s a good man, treats his people well. A better example of nobility than most.”

Cullen sighs deeply, feels like turning and knocking his head against the stone wall until his consciousness gives out. “More nobles,” he says, “for your collection.”

“If that is what you are determined to believe,” he hears her reply, her accented voice soft but strong, “I will not waste my breath convincing you otherwise.”

“This is madness,” Cullen finally says.

The Inquisitor stands. “It’s not,” is her reply, but it’s gentle. “We have been in here for hours. North and south no longer make sense.” Her voice is so quiet that Cullen feels it like a hand on his arm. It is a voice she once used for him. It hurts.

“We are done for today,” says Trevelyan, gently pushing in her chair. “And we’re not meeting tomorrow. No.” She holds up a hand when Leliana looks like she’ll say something. “This is too much, to go on and on and on like our bones will break if we don’t. It will wait.” It’s Cullen’s turn to raise his head in protest. But Trevelyan only shakes hers. “It will wait,” she says again, softly.

The ambassador fingers one of her pieces, and Trevelyan turns to cast her gaze on her. “Do it,” she says. “Let’s see if this Arl Wulff is worth his mettle. Write him.”

The ambassador places her piece on the table. The tiny sound of it makes Cullen look up, regard her as she steps back. She reaches for her tablet and takes the parchment, the one she’d been scribbling for the past hour, folding it neatly in thirds.

“Already done, my Inquisitor,” she says, her smile muted but bright. The Inquisitor looks at her, fairly blindsided. “For true?” she says, and the ambassador nods, dripping wax onto the fold and taking a seal from her pocket.

Leliana gives a startled laugh. “Josephine,” she says, admonishing once again, “You _minx._ ”

“My greatest pleasure in life,” says the ambassador, “is to surprise you, Sister Nightingale. May I borrow a bird?”

Cullen doesn’t realize he is at the door until he’s opening it, doesn’t realize he’s out of the hall until he feels the cold snap of Skyhold’s night winds, doesn’t realize he left the war table before they’d properly commenced before he’s collapsed behind his desk, breathing hard and harder.

  
~~~

 

He wakes the next day, stiff and shivering but having slept. The rest has soothed the claws of the lyrium scratching under his skin and he lies in his bed, looking at the sun being seeping through the clouds through the hole in his roof.

He rises with the sun, armors up and takes his sword down to the field where the soldiers drill and spends a whole day with them. The sun keeps up for the whole day, the exercise is glorious, and Cullen sweats and banters and spars with his soldiers until he has to take off his fur pauldrons and his armor, until he sweats through his linen shirt.

He even finds a new agent—an Orlesian woman who dreamed of being a chevalier but was born too poor. She has a terrifying way with a pair of longswords and speaks both common and high Orlesian. Her name is Manon and when Cullen takes her by the shoulder and promotes her, the grin of steel in her eyes as she nods in acceptance—it reminds him _why_ , why he does this, why he gives to the Inquisition. To make change with his hands. He forgets, sometimes, his strength—that it is not necessarily in sitting hunched over maps, going out of his head about nothing and everything.

When it grows dark, he hikes back up to Skyhold and his office, the ache from the overuse of his muscles pleasant as a lullaby.

He sees no one that day—not the Inquisitor, not Leliana, not the ambassador. He doesn’t realize it until he’s lying in bed, again, staring up at the stars.

  
~~~

Leliana comes by his office a few days later, accompanied by a raven with a note tied to its foot. He dismisses his scouts and rises, carefully untying the parchment when she holds out a steady arm as a perch for the bird. While he’s reading over the letter ( _damn_ the Storm Coast and it’s unending supply of darkspawn), Leliana gently clears her throat.

“Oh,” Cullen starts, putting down the letter. “Forgive me. Is there something you need, Sister Nightingale?”

Leliana glances at the three doors—the door she came through is still open, bright sunlight streaming through. She rests her gaze on him, cocks her head slightly. “Is something going on between you and Josephine?” she asks, her tone as even and cool as night air.

Cullen blinks—if it had been a blow, he would have been knocked off-balance. “No,” he says, a lie. But Leliana rarely, _rarely_ asks questions she doesn’t know the answer to anyway. She looks contemplative.

“Are you quite sure?” she asks, idly petting the bird with the back of her hand. “The tension between you is solid enough to cast its own shadow.”

Cullen is proud of himself for not reddening. “We have had…disagreements,” he allows. “We do not see eye to eye, precisely.”

“Indeed,” says Leilana. “I heard what you said in the Great Hall, the day the Inquisitor left for the plains.”

  _Oh._ That. Cullen rubs the back of his neck. “A mistake,” he said quietly. His skin feels hot and prickly under Leliana’s assessing gaze, and he stands up slowly.

“If the ambassador takes issue with me,” he says, his voice matching hers for evenness, “she is more than capable of bringing her grievances to me herself. Indeed, she already has.”

“I know,” Leliana’s eyes drop to the bird, gently adjusting it on her arm. Cullen glances down, unsure of what to say.

“Cullen,” says the spymaster, “I will say this and no more because she is _soeur de coeur._ ” The commander has no idea what she’s said and will under no circumstances ask for clarification. He nods and Leliana meets his eyes again.

“People are rude to Josephine on an unconscionably frequent basis.” She lifts the bird up and it hops onto her shoulder. “No surprise—that is the work of the diplomat. I only ask you do not lend your voice to that horde.”

Cullen rests his hands on the pommel of his sword, adjusts his feet. Leliana nods and turns to take her leave. He clears his throat and speaks before he realizes it: “I am happy to do so,” he says, “if she will grant me the same courtesy.”

He does not know what he expected Leliana to do, but it was not _grin at him_ as she stood in the threshold of his office.

“Fair enough,” she says, and then she is gone.

  
~~~

Dorian snags him for a chess game the next day, now that he’s back from the Exalted Plains. Cullen almost declines, but the mage sighs dramatically and says, “The only thing I’ve had to look at for the past month is houses on fire, wolves chewing on halla, and the ugliest damn rocks in Thedas. Something civilized, I beg of you, Commander.” He flutters his eyelashes and Cullen rolls his eyes in response.

An hour and a half later they’re bent over the board, Dorian’s stolen one of his castles and Cullen has successfully (sort of) fended off five different questions about Trevelyan.

“Arram has the longest legs I’ve ever seen,” says the mage wistfully, and Cullen accidentally knocks his king off the table. When he comes up, Dorian has swiped two pawns. “It might actually be physically possible to—what did that healer at the Crossroads say? ‘Climb him just as you’d climb a tree.’”

Cullen chokes and Dorian’s laugh rings out, half amusement, half triumph. In retaliation, Cullen takes his knight and both his castles within the next two turns. Dorian grumbles, moves a piece.

“You look better and worse,” is what Dorian says next, and Cullen cocks his head, looking across the board.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you look better and worse,” Dorian clicks his tongue between his teeth. “You should sleep more. I can tell you haven’t been. I’m a mage, you know.”

“I’m aware,” says Cullen, and captures Dorian’s king. “Touchy, touchy,” says the Tevinter.

As they carefully put away the board, Dorian sighs, and looks like he might pat his shoulder. “Sleep more, please,” he says. “You ride the line between Fade and earth with those circles under your eyes.”

“You worry so,” remarks Cullen. “It’s putting lines in your forehead. Charming. Distinguished, even. Very mature.” The look on Dorian’s face makes him chuckle, low and rusty.

  
~~~

 

The missive comes at night two days after, late in the evening with Skyhold is lit by soft torchlight. His scout knocks tentatively, brings him the missive and—a cup of something hot. He bows and exits, shutting the door behind him.

Cullen stares at the cup for a full minute before unrolling the report. He drinks it while reading (strong black tea, very Fereldan) and is done by the time he finishes the parchment. He sits back in his chair, runs a hand over his face. He acknowledges he could do this with a runner, but he stands up, rolls the message under his arm, and sets off across the stone bridge to the great hall and the Ambassador’s office.

The great hall is deserted, marvelously quiet. Cullen pauses for a moment after walking out of Solas’ solarium, enjoying the stillness. The only sound is of his heavy boots padding across the floor. Her door is ajar, just a bit, and he comes close to knocking but then—

A flash of blue and gold, and then linen and buttons—Cullen squints, angles closer and can finally see inside with relative clarity. A moment of pure confusion passes, and then his mouth drops open, just slightly.   _Oh._

The ambassador dances with the Inquisitor.

He would only describe it that way because it is obvious that the Antivan is leading—he can hear her humming something under her breath. They move very slowly, and even he can make out the pattern of their counting—one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. The ambassador gently spins the Inquisitor in a single rotation, raising her arm.

They go on for awhile, over and over. The Inquisitor steps on her feet, misses a step and tries to stop—the ambassador does not let her, just makes the same noise Cullen makes when soothing an anxious horse ( _that_ makes the corner of his mouth turn up), and they continue. One-two-three, one-two-three, spin, spin, one-two-three, one-two-three, spin, spin. At one point, the ambassador gently turns a spin into a dip—nothing deep, but it makes Trevelyan laugh a little.

Finally, the ambassador gently halts them, bows, and steps away. She grins, politely clapping with soft pats of her hands. The Inquisitor slumps down, sitting on a bench by the ambassador’s fireplace.

“You are doing so much better,” she says, her voice entirely sincere. “I mean it, Inquisitor. You do well.”

“Thank you,” says Trevelyan, who sounds remarkably weary for a woman having done an extremely slow version of the Orlais waltz. “I’m trying.”  
  
“It shows,” says the ambassador. She turns to arrange something on her desk—a very large book is open, and Cullen can see drawings of paths for the feet.  
  
Trevelyan’s response is a deep sigh, and Cullen watches her put her head in her hands. He realizes suddenly that this is incredibly rude of him to watch this, but he knows without a doubt that if he moved they would notice. So he stands still, still as he can.

He realizes that the ambassador knows Trevelyan’s mood without looking at her, that the arranging of things on her desk is an attempt to give her a moment. When she finally turns, she closes the distance between her and the Inquisitor with a few steps. The ambassador sits down on the thin rug, her skirts a pile of blue and gold waves and looks up at the Herald of Andraste, her hands in her lap.

“Inquisitor,” she murmurs gently. “What troubles you?”

There is a long pause while Trevelyan breathes; the ambassador waits with an air of infinite patience.

“There are people dying,” the Inquisitor begins, her voice low and rough. “Rifts opening and everything’s burning, demons stalking the entirety of Orlais, piles of dead bodies and soldiers who just want to go home, and—” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “It just feels—so pointless. What good does this do, other than convince some Orlesian duchess I’m not trash? I left this life when I was ten—what good is it? I just—it’s hard, Josephine. It makes me feel…”

She swallows, runs her hands over her face. “Like I should be doing something real. It seems useless.”

The world is still for a moment—Trevelyan, staring miserably at her lap; the ambassador, looking quietly up at the Inquisitor; Cullen, watching them both.

The ambassador reaches up, gently places her hands on the Inquisitor’s fists, sitting rigidly in her lap. “You are not wrong,” she murmurs.

Cullen’s head buzzes with confusion—it was, perhaps, the very last thing he expected her to say. Trevelyan has a similar reaction, her head jerking up to meet the ambassador’s eyes. The Antivan almost smiles, the edge of her lips turning up.

“You are not wrong,” she repeats, her voice still very soft. Cullen strains to hear her. “These things—dancing, the particulars, how to hold your fork or do your hair, the entirety of the Game—all ways for them to prove you do not belong.” Her long fingers are still on the Inquisitor’s; Trevelyan’s fists have begun to loosen. “It is a way of keeping many out and only letting a few in. That is how they gain their power, the players—by eliminating the competition. By making this process something that takes immense time, energy, money—things most do not have. I know this well, Inquisitor.”

They are quiet for a moment, the ambassador looking contemplative. Trevelyan finally voices her question: “Then why do we bother? Why not—forgo it, change the world, _fuck_ Orlais and the Game?”

The ambassador considers this, her dark eyes intensely thoughtful. “Many depend on those nobles, on the duchy and the lords. They serve in return for protection, for a home. Those people—they number few and rule the lives of many. If you gain their trust, their respect—you can _change_ them. They will open to your righteous spirit. They will gather at your side when it is time to fight, or speak, or die, or elect, or broker peace, or wage war. Inquisitor,” she squeezes Trevelyan’s hands, “they will _listen._ ”

The world is still again. Cullen rests his head against the doorjamb.

“All their soldiers,” the ambassador says, her voice so quiet that the muted crackling of the fire nearly covers it. “All their farmers, their craftsmen, their merchants, their families, their children, their wives, their husbands—you can make them safer, make them _matter_.” The ambassador smiles. “No lightning or fire necessary. Well—not much.”

Trevelyan chuckles, and the Antivan gives her a grin.

“Besides,” she says, “dancing is not useless. Everyone learns how sometime. Farmers and mages and kings alike.” She stands in a graceful rise, offers a hand to the Inquisitor, who stands too.

“Once more,” says Trevelyan, “before I depart. We should try for another lesson.”

The ambassador bows. “It would be my pleasure,” she says.

Cullen realizes that he needs to make his presence known, and knocks on the door. Both women whip their heads around, and he gently opens the door more widely.

“Inquisitor,” he nods to Trevelyan. “A word, if you would?” He raises the parchment and glances at the ambassador.

Trevelyan leaves them with a yawn, lumbering out of the room and closing the door behind her. And then they are alone.

Cullen rubs the back of his neck with a hand, extends the parchment to the ambassador. “The grove is complete,” he says, simply.

The ambassador takes the missive without a word, reads it over. She sighs, deflates slightly, leaning back against her desk.

“Your knight-captain,” she says, “did not accept help.”

“On my orders,” Cullen reminds her. “And it is done, quickly enough.”

“It explains,” says the ambassador, “the letter I received this morning.” She pauses and Cullen cocks an eyebrow. “They are withdrawing their support. For now.” She rubs at the bridge of her nose.

“For now?” he asks.

“Until I can convince them otherwise,” she says. She turns, drops the letter on her desk. She rummages in a drawer and retrieves a long red candle.

“Are there not more?” Cullen does not know how to proceed. He holds no grief over two noble houses feeling  _undervalued_  and thus not willing to stand for what is right. It is such a simple thing to do.

“Yes, everywhere. Like weeds,” retorts the ambassador. “I would imagine you think they are like rashvine, hanging out of every crevice, stretching their long arms towards any helpless victim.”

Cullen does not want to lie, so he shrugs. “I am sure you will find others,” is what he offers.

“You and the Inquisitor want to build keeps across the south,” says the Antivan, readying a pile of parchment. “Leliana wants better pathways for her agents. We need to build another barracks for the soldiers before true winter, we need more housing units for the refugees, and Mother Giselle wants to turn the central courtyard into a Chantry garden.”

“Yes?” Cullen says, after a long moment of silence.

“It requires stone.” Finally, the ambassador looks directly at him and he can feel the _heat_ of her gaze. She is furious. It makes him take a step back.

“Ambassador—”

“House Apolline has the closest quarry to us,” she says, turning from him and proceeding to rearrange things on her desk with questionable force. “House Marten has many caravans, when the sky isn’t being ripped apart.”

Cullen places his hands behind his back, sighs. “You told no one?” is his response, and _Maker’s breath_ , that was the wrong thing to say, he knows the moment she rounds on him. The contrast between this ambassador—this _Josephine_ , who cannot abide him and the ambassador who gently twirled the Inquisitor across the rug grates against him in a way he doesn’t understand. He has never felt so at odds before, never in his life—the heat of her fury scratches against his bones.  

“The Inquisitor, yes,” snaps the ambassador. “She is who I answer to. I trust—” She swallows. “I trust when I am given a job others will trust I can do it.”

“We will find another way. Maker, Ambassador, it’s stone,” Cullen says flatly. “We will find more.”  

“Where, Commander?” The ambassador stands before him, her fingers linked together tightly. “It should be a simple enough task for you. Where shall we find stone?”

Cullen opens his mouth, but she holds up a hand. “Almost all the land in Orlais is someone’s,” she says. “They’ve had enough time to parcel it out.”

When Cullen falters, the ambassador clenches her fists. Her shoulders do not sag—if anything, they grow stronger, like iron cooling in the forge.

“I have work to do, Commander,” she says, her voice quiet. She looks at the stacks of letters on her desk, the missives piled in a corner. “Unless you would like to try. You seem to be confident enough in your abilities.”

Cullen takes another step back, inclines his head. “I did not come here to brawl with you,” he says. “I came to deliver the news.”

“Yet here we are.” The ambassador sighs deeply, a hand on her hip. Her fingers rub the bridge of her nose.

Cullen knows a dismissal when he hears it. He bows his hand, hand on his sword. “Good night, Ambassador,” he says quietly, turning on his heel. When he reaches the threshold of her office, he can feel the weariness of this, of these moments that never seem to cease. The current of it runs along his bones and he _does not understand_ why it affects him so—he has sparred with others, fought and flailed and decidedly _not gotten along_ but this, this hurts and rubs him raw, slides under armor and skin to the very core of him.

“Commander.” The ambassador’s voice stops him, and he turns. She is looking at the fire, the light of the flame licking shadows onto the gold of her dress. She turns her dark head to him.

“Who do you fight for, in the Inquisition?”

The question makes him narrow his eyes, as though parsing for a trick. “What do you mean?”

“You are here, a soldier, a commander, a man of the sword. Who do you fight for?” The question is simple. The ambassador sounds tired.

“Everyone,” he says with a shrug. “The Inquisitor, especially. But—the soldiers. The refugees. People in the Hinterlands, the Graves, the Plains. Ferelden. My family.” He adds the last as an afterthought, ashamed to have almost forgotten. “Even Val Royeaux.” He doesn’t know what to say. “Everyone,” he repeats.

The ambassador nods. “Even me?” she asks, her tone even.

Cullen blinks. “Of course?” he says, puzzled. “Everyone who lives within these walls.”

She nods again. The moment passes, long and solid. Cullen turns to go, and she says, “When I speak, I fight.” She pauses. “I do it to find a way. For everyone.” She rubs her arms in front of the fire. “The Inquisitor, especially. But—yes, the soldiers, and the refugees. People in the Hinterlands, the Graves, the Plains. Ferelden. Certainly my family. Antiva.” She closes her eyes. “Even Val Royeaux.”

She turns her dark head to look at him. “Everyone who lives within these walls. Even you.” She turns back to the fire, looking into it like it’s a long, complicated puzzle she must solve by morning.

Cullen turns, leaves, doesn’t realize he’s outside until the night wind cuts through him on his way back to his office. An hour later, in bed, he looks up at the stars through the hole in his roof. Looking at the stone—well. He doesn’t know how to look at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New OTP: Cullen/soldiers  
> Your feedback (of all kinds) is always so appreciated!  
> tumblr: klickitats


	4. suggestion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josephine is surprised, not once, but twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dorian made some remark about Crestwood last chapter--it's been edited to the Crossroads, mostly because I'm dumb and forgot my own timeline. Speaking of which, this is where I start to adjust where some of the war table missions happen/make up stuff in order to suit the story better. Ah, the world of fiction. Definitely welcoming feedback on it.

_You, holed up in a mountain?_ is the first line of Laurien’s letter. _I truly think you could survive off defying expectations alone, Josie. No food or water required._

Laurien is the hand that writes, Antoine the hand that builds—or wrights, if Josephine was speaking to Varric. The letters come just often enough to soothe growing worry that percolates beneath her skin when it comes to her family, cyclical as the days and weeks. Laurien’s writing is messy and full of character, but each word is chosen with shrewd calculation. He is a businessman, first and foremost, a negotiator mastering a different kind of tempest.

 _Antoine won’t be pleased I told you this, but Velia is pregnant again._ Josephine worries her bottom lip with her teeth. _They are careful as feathers. He lights a candle at the Chantry every morning before sunrise. Let it never be said this family shied away from the impossible._

That makes Josephine smile, despite herself.

 _The newest ship is inching along—I think Antoine would build the whole thing by himself if time would allow. But he’s finally found a work crew who can bear him, Andraste be praised. We’ve taken more care, this time._ Josephine’s heart clenches at the memory, even after years of time’s soothing. She remembers: sitting in Celene’s court, the ambassador from Rivain telling a story about poisoned tea, and a courier delivering a piece of parchment with one word— _fire_.

 _But we’re boring,_ mi sorella, _compared to you, running about in the snow and arranging coups and changing the world. Is it true the Inquisitor is as mighty as a dragon? That you run not only with Qunari and elves, but Tevinter mages as well? Fascinating._ She can hear Laurien’s wistful tone, can picture him propping his feet up on his desk with his letter in his lap, awkwardly leaning forward to dip his quill in the pot and sighing longingly, leaning back to ponder his next words.

 _Everyone is so worried for you_ , he writes. _I’m not. Well, I am, but—if there’s anything to reassure me this world won’t end in iron and bloodshed, it’s knowing your hands are moving the pieces on the chessboard._

_Raul and father are still visiting family in north Antiva—by all accounts, all is well. He does well in school, spends too much time chasing skirts. Father caught him trying to sneak out his window by sliding down a bedsheet—I suppose, statistically, one of us was destined to be a lothario._

_Also—Maker, I feel stupid for saying this, because you’re going to write me back four parchment pages of only prying questions, but I’ve found someone._

Josephine’s eyebrows nearly graze her hairline, and the forceful way she places the parchment flat on her desk, scoots forward so she can read it with her nose an inch away from the page, nearly upsets a candle.

 _Hold this a reasonable distance away, Josie, before you get ink on your nose._ As she has for over twenty years, Josephine ignores her brother completely. _He makes instruments. Beautiful things, out of silver and wood—you’ve never seen the like. I was just walking down the street, and some urchin ran out of his shop with a flute in his hand. He was quick—I was quicker. When I returned the piece to the shop, he hadn’t even noticed it was gone…too absorbed in finishing the bow for a violin. His hands are as big as my head, and somehow they accomplish the tiniest movements with the grace of…I don’t know. Something very graceful. He showed me how the flute worked, how he made it. He held it like it was the most precious thing in the world._

Josephine snorts, a thing she will allow in the privacy of her office.

_I am not telling you his name because I’m sure with those details alone you will have deciphered his identity with a speed a racehorse dare not match. He is unlike anyone I’ve ever met—politicians, bureaucrats, bankers—I have tried them, you know I have, and none of it has ever worked._

_It does not matter what he does. He is as good to my heart as he was to that flute. It is the end of the world—something about that makes you know what you want. I never would have thought it—but here it is, all at once._

Beneath it, scrawled in heavy, dark writing is Antoine’s additions: **_Be safe. No dragons. Ti adoro._**

And under that, a splotch of thick purple paint.

_Ah, the loquacious nature of our siblings. Yvette is too busy to put down her paintbrush, so here is a taste of her latest portraiture._

_Your brother,_ _Laurien_

Josephine does have questions—enough for four parchments _at least_ , but instead she sits back in her chair, shuffles the letter so she can start at the beginning, and reads it again. When she is done she will lock it in the top drawer of her desk, where she keeps things that are precious to her.

She will pick up the letter in a week’s time when she is tired and cold and feeling like a stranger in a strange land, she will chuckle at Laurien’s nature and finger the purple of Yvette’s paint, admiring how even a year from now it will not fade. She will worry for Antoine, cluck her tongue at Raul, and somehow this will soothe the ache that grows in her, cyclical as the days and weeks.

Skyhold is her home, now—the crumbling stone, the strange wildflowers, the icy bite of the mountain cold. But, for all her hoping and her prayers, she cannot help missing what she does not have.

  
~~~

 

At the war table, the Inquisitor makes a plan to seek Crestwood, and then possibly the Western Approach.

The commander gently taps the map. “Expansion is necessary, Inquisitor,” he says, “but we must think about the speed with which we do it. Spreading our forces so far—there’s risk.” They’ve only just restored a keep in the Dales on the Inquisitor’s last excursion.

“We’ll work on conscripting in tandem, then,” says the Inquisitor. “Crestwood’s got Caer Bronach, according to Leliana. The Western Approach needs a keep—everything’s blown to pieces out there, and it’s too far from us. These reports…” They all look at the pile of missives on the table, detailing hordes of Venatori, dragonlings, darkspawn everywhere, pits of poisonous gas. 

The commander nods. “I’ll redouble our efforts,” he says, and his fingers wander over the map to place the pieces. Josephine only looks at him when he’s looking down at the table, and she follows the lines of his arm to his gloved hand. His fingers are shaking, she realizes. The tremor is so small that you could miss it, but suddenly it’s all she can look at. When he pulls his hand back to rest on the pommel of his sword, her eyes dart up and away and right into his.

It’s an accident, to be caught staring, and the commander looks away sharply. The tips of his ears go red.

“Good,” says the Inquisitor. “We’ll see what I make of Crestwood, at any rate. Perhaps we’ll be able to delay the Approach until we’re better seated in troops. Anything else?”

“Lydes,” says Leliana, and Josephine nods. “Bull’s delivered a report about a fight for succession there.” Josephine places her tablet on the war table and illustrates the three candidates with brevity—Monette, a malleable chantry sister, Caralina, an apathetic duchess, and Jean-Gaspard, an ambitious chevalier.

The Inquisitor sits back in her chair, her fingers tapping a tattoo on the arm. “Well, none of them sound ideal,” she says with a sigh.  
  
Josephine nods. “They rarely are,” she replies.

“Take out Monette,” offers Leliana. “I can see that the Chantry encourages her to become a sister.”

The commander makes a noise of approval. “A malleable leader could be manipulated by too many outside forces—forces that aren’t the Inquisition."

“Agreed," says the Inquisitor. “So what’s our endgame?”

“Recruit Jean-Gaspard to the Inquistion,” the commander says, glancing down at the map. “A chevalier would bolster our forces. He is capable and has his own men who’d follow him here.” He shrugs. “It seems simple enough.”

“Hmm,” Josephine remarks, and the sound of it is enough to alight the tension between them. Leliana raises her eyebrows, and the Inquisitor settles back in her seat to either watch the battle or prepare to take a blow.

Josephine folds her arms, sends up a wisp of a prayer to Andraste for endurance, and looks down at the map. Perhaps if she does not look at him, the war table will remain standing at the end of the hour.

“A suggestion, Ambassador?” The commander says lowly, evenly, waiting.

“He seems ill-suited to a force such as ours,” she replies, listening to every syllable of his voice. They are not at war—not yet. But she can feel every possibility in the tone of those three words. She wonders, not for the first time since they began this strange battle, how she ever thought him emotionless.

She remembers sitting for hours in the walkways of Val Royeaux, her nose pressed in a book but not reading a single line, listening to the bits and pieces of Orlesian floating around her head from the passerby. Learning how people talked. Learning how people spoke. Learning to _listen_ , to _hear_ what someone truly meant just from a snippet of their voice. Emotions and tones and ethics had texture, just like fabric or stone, and you could reach out and touch them if you tried hard enough. You could feel the timbre under the pads of your fingers, read the currents of emotion swelling underneath. With him, it is an endless study. 

“The Inquisition will not last forever,” Josephine chooses her words carefully, “at least, that is my hope. Eventually he will want more than we can give. An idle and ambitious man is a risk to all.”

“Ambitious men and women have joined the Inquisition before,” says Leliana mildly. “The commander can handle them.”

The Inquisitor throws Leliana a glance that Josephine reads as _stop stirring the pot_ and the spymaster places her hands behind her back. Josephine can read the slight smile on her face, her lips just barely curving. _Andraste save me,_ thinks Josephine before the commander clears his throat.

“I can, yes,” he says. “Is that what’s at stake? I assure you that training the willing to follow a cause is something of a specialty of mine.” His hands are on the pommel of his sword again.

“He is a leader—let him _lead_ ,” Josephine volleys. “Hard to control, yes, ambitious, yes, but we could have his support _and_ know that we have a strong ally in Orlais. I can deal with a cunning man trying not to bite the hand that feeds him.” She smoothes her skirt.

“Ah,” says the commander and pauses. Josephne makes the mistake of looking up, and now their eyes are locked damnably. He clears his throat, and his eyes spark with frustration. When he speaks, his tone is as low as before, simmering. “So my ability to keep Jean-Gaspard in line is in question, but yours is not?”

The pause that follows is the moment before the ice cracks under your feet. It is the Inquisitor who sits forward in her chair and says, with an air of diplomacy that makes Josephine proud, “No one is casting that kind of judgement. Not here. Not when we must trust every move we make—that we _all_ make.”

Josephine breaks the heated stare between them, turns to the Inquisitor. _I answer to you_ , she reminds herself, _not him._ “I only mean to say,” she says quietly, “a tool has a purpose. Use it to that purpose. You can manipulate the malleable. You can play someone’s ambitions. I can do nothing with the apathetic. None of us can.”

She hears the commander sigh behind her. “And Jean-Gaspard is a sword,” he says. “We are in dire need of them, yet for the forest we cannot see the trees.”

“What do you propose, Josephine?” the Inquisitor asks, gently.

“Caralina,” Josephine says. “Her marriage. I can end it with--” she pauses, racking her brain quickly. “Four words,” she finishes, “and the proper glove left on the proper table.”

“End it,” says the Inquisitor. “Commander—find out more about this Jean-Gaspard. I don’t know where I want him in play, not yet.”

That day, it is Josephine who is the first to leave the war room.

 

~~~

 

“Let me ask you something, Ruffles,” says Varric, shuffling the cards with a quick flick of his hands. The firelight illuminates the sly smile creeping at the corners of his mouth; Josephine sits back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap. She revels in the quiet of the great hall, how calm and peaceful it is at this hour. She eyes the dwarf warily. “Yes?” she says, knowing she’ll regret it almost immediately.

“What,” he begins dealing the cards, “is going on between you and Curly, _exactly_?”

Josephine groans, a most unladylike sound and her elbows thump on the table. “You and Leliana,” she accuses, pointing a finger at the dwarf’s smile. He starts to laugh.

“We’re noticers, you know. We, uh…notice. For a living.”

“Grand,” retorts Josephine. She picks up her cards. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

That was exactly the wrong thing to say, as Varric’s grin grows even wider. “Oh? Why not?”

Josephine looks pained and looks over her hand. She doesn’t want to say it. Saying it means diplomatic failure.

“Come on, Ruffles,” Varric soothes, his toothy grin not diminishing _in the least._ “You can tell me.”

After a long deep sigh, a thought and a prayer to Andraste, and a rub to the bridge of her nose, Josephine grumbles, “The Commander and I do not get along.”

“That all?” says Varric, sly as a fox. Josephine holds her cards up to her face. “Of course it is,” she replies. “That we do not see ‘eye to eye’ is a grave understatement, if you must know.” She places down a card.

“You, unfriendly with someone?” Varric looks like his nameday has come early this year. “Didn’t realize it was possible.”

Josephine sighs, watches Varric take the hand. “He does not respect me,” she says after a little while. “And I cannot understand why he must throw a trebuchet at every target.” She worries her bottom lip with her teeth as she considers her cards. “Even if it is the size of a pea.”

Varric chuckles, playing his next card. “Cullen’s good at trebuchets,” he says, and before Josephine can protest (how can someone _be good at_ trebuchets?), he swipes the hand and she’s lost again.

“Hold on,” Varric reaches under his chair and pulls out two wooden cups and a flask of wine. He pours it while Josephine splutters. “The diamondback can wait,” he reassures her. “I’ve been waiting for two weeks to talk about this.”

Josephine knows when to make defeat a graceful thing, so she raises her wooden cup to Varric, shaking her head, and drinks. And tells him everything.

“He thinks I am a girl playing at dolls,” she says, frustration seeping into her voice. “If I had a sword as tall as I was, he would think me worthy to be at the war table. Not a moment before.”

“Ruffles,” soothes Varric. “You’re worth all the gold in Orzammar. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“I know,” she sighs, fingers the bridge of her nose. “I feel—there’s an impasse between us that can’t be bridged. And I don’t think he wants to. I don’t know if I want to.”

“Curly has his head pretty far up his ass,” says Varric so conversationally that Josephine almost spits out her wine. “Ever since he got nice hair, people forgot he can be kind of a bastard. It’s disarming.” He takes a drink. "I like him, though. That might actually be part of the reason why." 

He sits back in his chair, considering the fire. “I’ve known Curly for years, sort of,” he says. “He was in Kirkwall, which explains a lot. Qunari running all over the place, can’t step outside without smacking into a blood mage, templars distributing the Tranquil brand like candy…” He shakes his head. “A crazy-as-shit knight commander who literally turned into red lyrium. Oh, the chantry blowing up,” he adds as afterthought.

Josephine nods. She knows about Kirkwall—who doesn’t? It’s the horrid seed of all this.

“Curly was her second—knight-captain to the knight-commander. I don’t know much about it—he’s tighter about his words than someone without a tongue—but I know he tried to reason with her. Not at the beginning, maybe, but—towards the end. Even he knew something was up.” Varric shrugs. “All for a nug’s ass, as my brother used to say. Only way to stop Meredith was to cut her head off. A lot of people died and suffered and a lot of people are still suffering. Maybe if someone had just gotten the balls and done it sooner, there’d be a little more peace in Kirkwall.”

“I don’t know about that,” says Josephine. “It’s Kirkwall. And cutting off people’s heads doesn’t solve a question of leadership.”

“You know that,” Varric replies, “and I know that—but I can see why it’d be hard for Cullen to see something like that.”

They’re quiet for a handful of heartbeats after that, listening to the crackle and snap of the fire. Josephine traces the rim of her wine cup. Varric lifts the flask, pours her more without asking.

“I like your way, Ruffles,” says Varric after a time. “It’s the way I prefer most. Or maybe it’s Leliana’s way. I don’t know—the way you can draw blood without drawing a knife. That’s what I like.” He takes a satisfying mouthful of wine. “You have all the power in the room and no one knows it. Shit, you can see the future. You don’t even need magic. _That’s_ impressive.” He raises his cup to her, just a little. Josephine chuckles, nods in acceptance, buries her blushing face in her own cup.

“But,” Varric says, “I dunno. People like Curly, like my friend Hawke, people who are _warriors_ , sometimes…they have to give that up. To lift that sword, you have to sacrifice something, you gotta abandon whatever the world was before you drew your weapon.”

“Are you saying…” Josephine’s heart falls. Her fingers play with her cup idly. “That it’s more vital? To know how to shed blood than to know how to find an understanding?”

“Fuck no,” says Varric with a startled laugh. “It’s not _either-or_ , Ruffles. At least, not how I see it.” He drains his cup of wine. “We all need a country—a _cause_ , if you wanna get dramatic about it—to fight for. Somebody’s gotta make sure it’s protected, and somebody’s gotta make sure there’s something to _be_ protected.” He sighs. "'Course, that doesn't give him any right to be rude. Give 'em hell, I say. It's good for him. Probably the best thing for him, now that I think of it."

He catches Josephine’s eye, smiles at her in a way that eases the tension still prickling in her heart at his words. “Josephine. I shit you not--I know absolutely nothing. But if you're asking...it’s not about who’s right or better or any of that horseshit,” he says, chuckling. “It’s about _balance._ "

 

~~~

Varric gives her a piece or two of advice before she goes: _watch him drill in the yard_ and _don’t let him get away with anything._

 

~~~

 

From her window, Josephine can see a tremendous amount of Skyhold. That’s why she put every effort into making sure she was ready the moment they arrived—her office is on the way to the war room, so they must always pass her there. She has a window that sees the entire yard. And a fireplace. That’s doubly important. Josephine chills easily, and she will not have guests from foreign lands shivering in her office while they try to negotiate peace treaties.

The letter she is writing does not come easy today—an update to Marquis du Rellion about the Inquisition’s progress. _Why do you even need to know?_ she thinks with a sigh, remembering how quickly he would have shoved all Haven off his doorstep. She knows it as well as she knows the lines on her own hands, but the fickleness of those in power is exhausting some days.

A distant sound of shouting, the clattering of metal. Josephine has tuned it out with exceptional skill since coming to Skyhold, but today she has no patience for it. She goes to the window, indignant, _what_ in the Maker’s name—

There is a _duel_ going on in the yard. Well—something close to a duel. Josephine gasps aloud and reaches blindly behind her for the chair, pulling it up close and sitting, eyes riveted. A woman with two long swords—she is tall and lean, all in leather armor and spinning like a top. Manon, Josephine remembers, from a report. An Orlesian. Her hair is the color of carrots, curly and wild and bound up best it can be in a bun on top of her head. She darts, parries, leaps forward—and Josephine recognizes her partner.

Josephine has never seen the commander fight before. Not even at Haven—she was too busy trying to keep everyone calm as they traveled through the narrow passageway into the mountains, too busy trying to keep Adan calm, so claustrophobic he couldn’t breathe as they went through. Josephine had held his hands, and walked in front of him, and pulled him through, step by step by step. He had followed after, every line of his body stricken with worry for Trevelyan. They all were.

But this.

They are a _marvel._ Like dancers, better than the chevaliers in the books she read under the covers as a girl. Manon twists, thrusts—the commander is slower but stronger, every movement a calculated measure of control. It is obvious watching him that the fight is just as much an exercise of the mind as it is of the body. Everything is calculated—every step, every breath, every movement of his shield. Manon is just as precise, but quicker, using agility and surprise to circumvent the commander’s blows. Josephine props her head on her hands, her elbows on the sill, and watches unabashedly.

The commander moves with a fluidity she did not expect or estimate—not like an Antivan duelist, rapier in hand and feet all a-flutter—but the way a predator must move, must anticipate, must control the field and act on utter instinct. He does not falter, not for a second. He never hesitates. A templar to the bone, Josephine realizes. It is easy to picture him fighting a demon. Or a woman made of red lyrium. Or a giant. One gets the impression that he would simply survey his quarry, draw his sword, and find a way to defeat it. It is not a question of  _how_  or  _why_. His body does what must be done, without falter, without fail. 

Josephine abhors violence, unquestionably. But she can admire _grace._

The fight ends soon after that—Manon darts in and forgets the commander’s shield, which he promptly uses to sweep into her side. He pulls it, she notices—she only falls to the ground. Even so, he quickly sheathes his sword and shield and goes to offer her a hand, which she takes.

As soon as Manon is to her feet, he grasps her elbow, a gesture of comradeship, and _grins._

Josephine sits back in her chair, hands in her lap. Then back to the window, squinting. In case it was imagination. In case her eyes failed her for a moment. She sees him turn—there is a wide audience of soldiers and recruits gathered—and his hand is on Manon’s shoulder. He’s explaining something, but Josephine can tell from his posture he is complementing her technique, using her to teach. He turns to the red-headed Orlesian, a shadow of that proud smirk still lingering at the corner of his mouth.

She has never seen him smile before.

Recruits line up. The commander takes off his heavy fur pauldrons and overshirt, until he’s just in plate and whatever fabric lies underneath. Manon hands him a wooden sword and a shield, and he begins to drill them. His heavy shoulders go up and down slightly as he catches his breath, motions to the first recruit to step up.

They go at it, strike, strike, turn strike—then Cullen will stop and adjust. He’s gentle about it. Josephine did not expect that. One of the recruits gets anxious, slips and jabs Cullen hard where he’s unarmored. Cullen—after getting his breath back—has Manon stand in his place and takes the recruit’s arm, showing each part of the three steps. Strike, strike, turn, strike. They do it three, four, five times, until the recruit does it himself. Cullen claps him on the shoulder as he goes to the end of the line, resumes his place.

Josephine pulls away and goes back to her desk, staring at the text of her letter. She certainly doesn’t go back and look again. Not once. Not even twice.

 

~~~

 

“This is not an excuse to _make friends_ , Ambassador.”

“I am not requesting we do so. I am only saying a seed might be planted.”

“Ah, of course,” says the commander, squeezing the pommel of his sword. “We _do_ have unlimited time to grow minor alliances.”

“How long,” Josephine replies, “did it take for your men to clear the grove?”

“Perhaps if we refocus,” suggests Leliana, as the Inquisitor stares at the two of them, looking weary.

“Inquisitor,” says the ambassador, “Let us use moment to rebuild our alliances with estates around Haven—it could be useful in the future. Consider the long-term.”

The commander sighs, and offers his advice as curtly as tradition dictates. “The Chargers are the best suited for this,” he says. “I must insist. Regardless of what nobility might be pleased, we do not know what still lies at Haven. They are a _tool_.” He glances pointedly at Josephine, and she feels the hairs on the back of her next rise. “Let us use them for their intended purpose.”

“Very well,” says the Inquisitor. “Keep an eye on those possible allies, Josephine—there may be opportunities after the Chargers scout it out. Cullen, give the Chargers the go.”

“To work,” the commander replies, and places a piece on the map. Josephine looks down and scribbles something on her tablet—a note, for later, something about looking at du Rellion’s family ties. She tries to quell the irritation beneath her skin, not at losing the argument but at the omnipresent failure of communication between them. _I am trying to understand you_ , she thinks at the back of his golden head. _You are making it difficult._

An understatement, to be sure. Josephine enjoys a verbal spar as much as the next diplomat, but this—she knows well when a war has begun neither can win. She can withstand anything, any person—a ship that overcomes any wave. Perhaps that is the crux of it—of what Varric was saying. Or something like it. Those who try to understand _all this_ abandon or lose the will to complete the effort. _I am not giving up_ , she thinks pointedly in his direction again, like a poison dart. If only understanding were so easy to inflict. 

 A messenger pokes his head into the war room. “Inquisitor, forgive me,” he says, stepping inside and bowing. Trevelyan turns, a hand outstretched. He delivers a carefully folded envelope into her hand. “Thank you,” she says, and he leaves.

“Josephine,” she says, reading it. “This addressed to both myself and…you.” She glances up. The ambassador gives her allowance with a shrug of her shoulder. After a few moments of silence, she glances up—the Inquisitor looks at the paper with wide eyes.

“Inquisitor?” she asks, and the tone of her voice makes both Leliana and the commander turn.

Trevelyan lays the letter down on the table. “The king of Ferelden,” she says, in a tone that’s mixed with confusion, even a hint of pride, “requests you, Josephine. Specifically.”

It takes a moment to register what the Inquisitor has said. She cocks her head, and Leliana asks the question before she can. “Why?”

“It’s vague,” Trevelyan says, nodding at the letter. “Something about initiating talks with Orlais. There is fighting from the civil war overflowing on the border and the people are clamoring for him to do something about it.”

Josephine fingers one of her pieces, and it’s the commander who asks the question. Somehow, it’s both surprising and unsurprising all at once. “Will you go?” he says.

“Commander,” she begins, and she meets Trevelyan’s eyes across the table. The Inquisitor nods her approval. “One does not refuse a king,” her voice is sure and steady as she places her piece. “What is it you say? ‘To work.’” She licks her fingers, extinguishes the candle on her tablet. “To work.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Josie ogling is just the cutest thing to me.  
> Thanks for reading. Your feedback floors me! 
> 
> tumblr: klickitats


	5. pivot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen does his best, under the circumstances.

_To Commander Cullen—_

_We have received your missive and request for additional troops for the Inquisition. House Tadan cannot procure the number you request without compromising its own lands. Walk in the Maker’s light._

 

~~~

 

The day starts young and raw, like the first gasp of air after half-drowning—Cullen jerks awake as though a noose tugs around his neck in the early hours of the morning, covered in cold sweat and gulping deep, heaving breaths. Not even the first touches of pink crack the dawn over the mountains. And for a full minute, a full _aching minute_ of rapid heartbeats, of clawing pain in his chest, of his brain being rattled like a stone in a jar—

He forgets where he is. Big hands fist the blankets, his feet on the cold floorboards and his head drops so low it nearly rests on his knees. And it comes back in a blinding rush, all at once, like it was never gone. Every line of his body sags with the momentary relief. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Cullen commits to his morning exercises—he does them every morning, no matter how his bones protest with no lyrium to soothe the burn. The wood is cold against his hands as he lowers and raises his body in quick rhythm, chin nearly touching the floor. On his back, he crunches his forehead to his knees in ceaseless, fluid rhythm, hands cradling the his head, till the cold sweat of nightmares is the burning sweat of effort, and that, Cullen thinks, is the way to begin a day.

He washes with a sponge and the icy basin of water, slides the comb and dab of grease through his hair (only Orlesians call it _pomade_ ) and by the time he’s donned fur and leather and armor—despite the dull throbbing in his thigh and the headache already begun at the stem of his skull—he feels halfway human again. He shoulders the pain as though it is just another trapping of steel on his back, climbs down the ladder, and when his scouts come in with the first missives, he’s already been at work for an hour.

 

~~~

  
  _Commander,_

_Our lands gave troops to the Inquisition the first time the Inquisition came calling. We can give no more. Maker be with you and the Herald of Andraste._

 

~~~

 

Cullen and Knight-Captain Rylen pore over a too-old map of the Forbidden Oasis and the Western Approach—the commander vows to enlist more scouts in the service of proper mapmaking, as this one will be nearly useless if the Inquisitor ever makes it out there. Rylen has just opened another map and released a soft _puff_ of dust into the air when a great shout rises from the courtyard, many voices clamoring in that entirely too specific mixture of upset, laughter, hooting, hollering, and cries for help that equates _soldiers making trouble._

The commander attunes to the sound as naturally as a dog takes a scent on the wind, and is pushing open the door to Skyhold’s battlements almost before he knows it. He ignores Rylen’s careful snigger ( _“go easy on ‘em, Da”_ ), and as he strides out into the sun a familiar voice, high and accented, cuts through the din and he pivots on his heel, leaning over the stone to take in the courtyard below.

A group of soldiers gathers around two men brawling, wrestling hard on the ground—they are most yelling at them to cease, a few even trying to stop before being shoved off by one of the brawlers, a handful jeering at the attempt—and—there is a figure in blue and gold and the voice catches his ears again—

“Stop! _Stop!_ _Ça suffit! Ça suffit!_ ” the ambassador, of all the Maker-taken witnesses, cries out amidst the din, trying to push past a fully armored guardsman two heads taller than she is and Cullen is done.

“ _Enough._ ” His voice is a thunderclap over the yard and everything stops. A group of four soldiers finally separate the two fighting—one spits in the other’s face, and the recipient snarls like a dog and wrenches after him—and Cullen among them now, his steps having taken him down the stone steps and they part for him in waves of steel.

“Out of my sight,” he says, his voice like steel. He has watched camaraderie grow and strengthen between all of them, watches it every day and is glad of it, but discord is only natural. Occasionally conflict must antecede trust. “Two hours extra shield practice today. For,” he pauses, looking them in the eye, “the _entirety_ of our forces. You will deliver the news to each and every soldier down in camp. Any one of you could have stopped this.” He wears his disappointment like a raiment, every movement and word utterly controlled. He has mastered this as a weapon—as a tool. “ _Intolerable._ Dismissed."

They scurry, their shoulders lowered and their feet tripping over themselves. They will have a long day, Cullen knows, but they will be better tomorrow.

He catches the ambassador looking at him, her arms folded across her chest. His soldiers part around her carefully, ripples of dull gray iron resigning themselves to the trek down and the punishment. Under her thoughtful gaze, he realizes she holds a bouquet of small, soft, purple flowers in one hand.

He pulls away, regarding his two skirmishers. The two stand long strides away from each other, bruised and bleeding from the nose and lip but otherwise unharmed. “My office,” Cullen states, unyielding. “ _Now._ ” They pivot immediately, knowing better than to hesitate. He eyes them all the way up the steps, watching for just the hint of a shove or the swing of an arm.

A soldier has lingered behind. “Commander,” he says, fist pressed to breast in salute. When Cullen gives him a quick nod, he continues. “Fino—the skinny one—he doesn’t speak the common tongue.”

Cullen blinks. “He doesn’t—what?"

“He doesn’t speak the common tongue,” repeats the soldiers. “He’s from one of them tiny Orlesian villages on the Dales.”

 _Andraste’s ashes._ It will take an hour for someone to fetch Manon for her to hike all the way to his office, even if she sprints the distance. He rubs a temple with a gloved hand.

“Commander.” The ambassador comes forward out of his periphery, and he notices how carefully she steps—as though she is choosing her approach as precisely as her words. “I…may I offer assistance?”

It rakes him, sparking the air between them like the crackle of hot coals—does she think he needs hand-holding in solving a simple dispute between his own men? _You think so little of me?_ is stirring underneath his tongue. He would not say such a thing aloud—perhaps if they were alone, says a bitter mouth in the back of his mind. But it lies underneath his words when he says, “No, Ambassador, I have—”

She must read it in the turn of his body as he turns to speak. As he faces her, she holds up a hand free of flowers and says: “I speak Orlesian. I could translate, perhaps? I am already here.”

Oh. He ignores the faint prickle of shame that runs up his spine. “I—yes,” he says, hands behind his back. “I would appreciate the service, if you have the time, Ambassador.” He glances at the ground, then lifts his gaze to meet her eyes.  

“Of course,” she says with a little nod, heading past him up the stone steps to his office. He pauses, just for a heartbeat or two, and follows her up.

And not even five minutes into his mediation, Cullen’s headache is sliding up the back of his skull and threatening to pound like a swell on the Storm Coast. Once all of them are confined in his office, the Orlesian soldier scuffs his boot at the Fereldan (his name is William, Cullen learns quickly) and they have to be physically separated by Rylen and the commander, the ambassador ducking out of the way with in graceful retreat. When the two are finally both standing, _at attention_ , Cullen rests his hands on the pommel of his sword and regards them from behind his desk. The ambassador comes forward again and stands at Fino’s shoulder, hands behind her back and waiting. Cullen gets the impression that if he leaned over his desk and looked down, he would find her perfectly balanced on the balls of her feet.

“From the beginning,” he says with a pointed look at William, who swallows, trying to contain his bile. “This—this Maker-fucked _blighter—_ ” spits the soldier, Fereldan to the very core, of course.

All it takes is a look from Cullen to cobble the soldier, who blushes deep red and looks down at his feet. He hears the ambassador cough quietly, echo the silence with soft Orlesian. Fino grinds his teeth, stature rigid as stone.  

“Very well,” Cullen says, voice like iron and just as even, and turns to the skinny Orlesian. William balks. “Ser,” he protests, and Cullen does not grant him his gaze.

“You lose your privilege to speak when you cannot do so with respect,” is Cullen’s answer. He regards the Orlesian—he must be an archer, Cullen thinks, with that build—and when Fino begins to speak in low, tight tones, the ambassador tilts her head just slightly. She speaks in the spaces between his sentences.

“I don’t like the way he looks at me, ser,” is what she says first, her eyes on Fino’s face. “He’s Fereldan—Orlesians shouldn’t be here, he keeps saying, we’re the reason the Inquisition’s bleeding out. He says you ought to throw us out of the army, that I don’t belong.” The soldier pauses, grappling with words, and something changes in the room. Cullen can feel it, feel it the same way you feel an adversary appear across a mile-long battlefield.

Fino swallows and begins again.  The ambassador follows, her tone even and calm and, if Cullen is not mistaken, almost gentle. “He looked at me today and said _they don’t have a place here_ and I couldn’t let it stand, ser. I have a place. I have a place.”

Fino looks at the ground, mutters something. The ambassador tilts her head, asks a question in Orlesian, and he repeats his mutter a little louder. She finishes, “So I chose to stop his mouth.” The ambassador’s eyes dart to Cullen, and then to Cullen’s Fereldan soldier, who looks pointedly at a wall. Cullen knows well nothing was said that diplomatically in the yard, but he appreciates the Orlesian’s attempt at civility.

“Shall we try again?” says the commander, and William coughs. “All my family died in the rebellion, ser,” he murmurs gruffly, and out of the periphery he hears the ambassador echo in soft Orlesian. “All except my mum, and she died when some fucking mad chevalier tore through our village with a demon at his back.” At this, the recruit shuts his mouth and looks at the wall over Cullen’s shoulder. He can see the muscles of his neck clench.

There is a moment of stillness, and Cullen quietly clears his throat. “Overcome this,” he says. “We cannot be Fereldan and Orlesian, bad blood skirmishing with bad blood. We cannot change history. The world is ending.” He regards them with a level stare. “Old divides must disappear. You are the Inquisition now. It must be your law, your country, your loyalty, or else Corypheus will dance on our graves as our ghosts brawl with each other over whose village burned first.” He closes his eyes, rubs a temple, listens to the ambassador translate his last words in her quiet, lilting voice.

“Three weeks of latrine duty, I think,” he says, and they both protest immediately—but the moment he opens his eyes they fall silent. “And I am reassigning you both to Lieutenant Manon’s squad—as tent mates.”

William reacts first, but as soon as the ambassador translates the two are matched in their sputtering. He holds up a hand, at the end of his patience. “Learn to be civil,” Cullen says, “and remember why you’re here.”

“He doesn’t even speak the common tongue!” protests William.

“Then teach him,” snaps Cullen, “or learn Orlesian, or both. Attempt an understanding.”

Fino raises his voice in Orlesian and before the ambassador can translate, Cullen holds up a hand. “Dismissed,” he says. William opens his mouth at the same time Fino does—at least in this they stand on even ground. “ _Dismissed_.” Cullen’s voice is the hammer on the anvil, and instinct makes them salute and retreat, the door shutting behind them.

Cullen does not know when Rylen excused himself, but suddenly he and the ambassador are alone in his office. “Ah,” he says, after a moment of silence, “thank you. For your help.” He rubs the back of his neck with a gloved hand. They stand in quiet, unbearable awkwardness. Cullen thinks, idly, this may be the longest they’ve gone without descending into an argument.

The ambassador breaks the silence with a soft clearing of her throat. “Of course,” she says. She is regarding him with a look he does not know how to read—the violets are settled in the crook of her folded arms.

“You look surprised,” he attempts, shifting his weight from side to side.

“I suppose I am,” she answers with a shrug. “I always—well. I just always imagined more _flogging_ in military discipline.” She meets his gaze. “It is not an unwelcome surprise.”

“I find that digging latrines works twice as well,” says Cullen, “and is altogether easier on my arm.”

She nearly smiles. “The Commander of our forces, shying away from exercise? I shall expect a missive from Leliana saying she has freed her birds in favor of druffalo.”

What Cullen doesn’t say is, _I have been where fear was the practice_. He doesn’t say, _I have been the one to call down that sentence._ He doesn’t say, _once I freed myself of that place I promised I would not become her._

“Do you disagree?” he asks instead, his voice careful. He wonders, suddenly, why he is testing her.

The ambassador taps her chin, unfazed. “It is usually not my first response to make enemies share a bedroll,” she muses. “It is…an interesting tactic.”

“They’ll end up learning more than they’d ever want to know,” Cullen responds, and his thoughts travel back to Kirkwall, and the lean, wolfish templar who shared his cell, called him _dog lord_ , woke him with a rough hand from his nightmares. “Does wonders for your willingness to spit in a man’s face. Also,” he pauses, adjusting his glove, “considerably warmer.”

Just the very corner of the ambassador’s mouth turns up. She clears her throat, fluffs the flowers gently with her fingers. “And all your soldiers sleep together like little lambs in their tents?”

“Only you and Leliana know,” he says, his voice almost joking. It is strange, the way they have wandered into these tones and cadences with the same ease as they find themselves in the middle of the kind of gritted teeth argument that scalds like boiling water, that leaves him with wounds to lick and fire in his belly. He is reminded how constantly the latter has raked at him. “Do keep my secret from Corypheus.”

The corner of her mouth threatens a smile once more. He coughs. “Thank you again,” he says. “I imagine you have something to deliver.” She quirks an eyebrow, then remembers what she carries.

“Oh!” she replies. “These. For Scout Harding. Adan says they grow where she lived in the Hinterlands.”

“Ah.” They are besieged by the awkward quiet once more, and the ambassador takes a step forward.  “I had planned,” she says, “to call upon you afterwards.” She fidgets with the flowers. “To, ah, ask a question.”

Andraste preserve him, he thinks. “Yes?” he manages.

“Leliana advised me,” she says, “to ask you about the king of Ferelden.”

There is a long moment of silence before Cullen finally responds, “…Why? Leliana fought with him, traveled with him and the Hero during the Blight.”

“He was a templar,” the ambassador says with a shrug, “and Leliana is not Fereldan.”

Cullen grasps mentally for straws. “I…I only met him once. And briefly.” He shakes his head, pushes down the raw feeling that _thinking_ about the moment he met Alistair Theirin brings. It stilts his voice, chills it. “He never took vows to the Order. I can offer no insight, Ambassador. I cannot help you.”

She nods quickly. “Very well,” she says, her eyes flicking away. She turns on her heel, her feet fast and quiet on the cobblestones as she leaves. Her shoulders are set in stone again. Cullen did not mean his words as a dismissal—but realizes, a handful of heartbeats too late, that the impact is quite different from his intent.

She is at the door when he says, “Ambassador, wait. _Ambassador._ ” And then she stops.

Cullen has remembered something, but it feels too stupid to say. “Yes?” she prompts, her hand on the knob.

“Let his mabari lick your hands,” he says.

The ambassador’s eyes widen. “What?” is all she can manage.

Cullen keeps going, feeling his ears turn red. “Fereldans, they’re— _we’re,_ ” he corrects, “very…particular about mabari.  About who they like, who they trust. That one—it’s his wife’s. The Hero’s. A recruit once told me it’s his constant companion.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Be kind to it.

The ambassador considers this, her hand still on the knob.

“Fascinating,” she muses. “Leliana said he liked cheese and roses.”

“And mabari,” says Cullen. “He is Fereldan.”

She nods again. She looks somewhere between surprised and pensive—but Cullen feels so out of his element it is difficult to read her face.

“Thank you, Commander,” she says. And then she is gone, and Cullen is left standing there.

 

~~~

 

_Commander Cullen,_

_We cannot. Maker guide you._

 

~~~

Two weeks later, Leliana hands him the letter as they survey the war table.

_We go directly to the Western Approach. The Champion’s warden says his fellows gather there. Send men if you can. Harding says it is hell on earth. Wait for word._

“Josephine and the king still wait for the Orlesians,” she adds, once Cullen has folded up the parchment and handed it back. “A battle has blocked the path, making their emissary late.”

Cullen resists the temptation to say _quite typical of them_.

He reads his other letters, full of refusal, vows to write twice as many that night before heading out to the yard to supervise Manon’s lessons in sword-and-shield.

 

~~~

 

“I miss our ambassador,” says Dorian over their next chess game, two weeks later.

Cullen moves a knight, doesn’t take the bait. “You miss the wine she sneaks you from the cellar.”

“No one knows about that.” Dorian sits back in his chair.

“Gives you an excuse to drink more Fereldan ale, I suppose,” Cullen says as he captures a knight.

Dorian makes a flustered noise. “Who told you?” he splutters.

“Krem may have alluded to it,” Cullen returns, nodding at Dorian to hurry up with his turn, “but I’m afraid you confirmed it, ser mage.”

Dorian swipes a castle in retribution. “You are changing the subject,” he says. When Cullen looks at the board, an extra piece is gone.

“ _Was_ there a subject?” he says idly, steepling his fingers as he considers his next move.

Dorian crosses his legs, looks at his nails. “Southerners,” he says. “You think you’re so subtle.”

“And you are?” Cullen moves his queen.

“At least I know it,” says Dorian. “You have no idea. We can all hear the _sniping_ , you know, Skyhold’s walls still have more holes than not—”

When Cullen pulls back to rebut this, he sees the scout approaching, covered in dust and dried blood and weak in the knees. “Commander,” he pants, nearly doubled over, and Cullen nearly knocks the chessboard over to get to him. He hands him a small roll of parchment.

And then everything changes.

 

~~~

 

_To the Commander of the Inquisition,_

_I have not enough to give at the skill or number you request. Who will protect my lands if the Inquisition falls? Who will protect these people if you fail? Forgive me, but I must submit to the Maker’s will a different way._

 

~~~

 

 Demons rise and breed at Adamant.

“I assume the ambassador plans on returning to us,” Cullen grits through closed teeth, pacing around the war table, “at some point.”

Leliana is still, rooted and calm. “I expect a letter from her at any time, Commander. I have never known her to be late.”

There are maps strewn everywhere, piles of missives and letters and parchment. Scouts and agents come in and out so frequently the door to the war room appears to revolve. They must be ready with plan in hand when the Inquisitor arrives back at Skyhold—two days at the soonest, four at the most. And for that, they need all three of them.

Cullen has sent out yet another round of letters—with runners, this time, as far as they can fly—for soldiers, siege equipment, _anything._

“Our numbers, Commander?” inquires Leliana. Cullen rubs his temple, considers the map.

“Passable. But only just. A place like this, against an army of _demons…_ ” His eyes narrow. He will not send the uninitiated off to die, to be front line fodder for a horror demon’s long claws, or a rage demon’s inescapable maw. “We have been refused on all counts. But I still hold hope.”

“Are we so low?” Her voice is puzzled. “Newcomers join the Inquisition every day.”

“They are the children of farmers,” Cullen says, a hint of frustration lacing his voice. “Peasants, alienage elves, refugees, shepherds. A knight or two, every once in a while.” He looks down at the map.

“You were a farmer’s son once,” reminds Leliana.

“A wheelwright’s, actually,” he corrects. “And then I went through several years of ceaseless training in combat and heavy armor.” He rubs the back of his neck. “When you recruit, you will always have your Hardings—those who take to the work like a bird to the air. But everyone needs training.” He sighs. “We train them hard and well, and any general would raise their eyebrow at our forces. But it takes _time._ ”  

Leliana moves to a pile of parchment, sifts through them—finds his letters of refusal, pages through them idly. “May I see one of your letters?”

“My conscription missives?” Cullen nods at a tablet near the end of the table, where two more wait for his signature and seal after the ink dries. He balances his hands on the table, poring over the old schematics of Adamant. Dorian had been most helpful in finding a map.

The fortress is old—an ancient thing, a geode from another time. As with all things, it is both bitter and sweet: a crumbling fortress will be laid low with ease, but the hidden hallways, nooks and pathways are beyond counting. The walls are incredibly high—Cullen already has his soldiers making extra ladders—and he can only imagine what the experience of scaling a ladder, only to find a pride demon whipping lightning about like a childhood nightmare at the top will be. Perhaps he can rally his captains, give them additional—

“Oh, _Cullen_ ,” Leliana says, in a tone of voice he doesn’t immediately understand. He then registers—disappointment. “Did you—did you ask Josephine for assistance with this?”

Cullen blanches, concentration on the map broken. “No,” he responds. “It’s simple enough. We have a need and they may fill it.”

“You simply demand so much,” says the spymaster, shaking her head. She sets down his letters.

“That is what we _need_. Is the world ending or not? Is Corypheus mustering an army of demons to conquer Orlais or not?” He rubs at a temple—a headache lances his skull. “They must pledge to the Inquisition or die.”

“I know that,” says Leliana, “and you know that. These people—they frighten so easily for the sake of their lands and their charges. You cannot demand they move earth and heaven and suddenly come up with two score well-trained archers.”

“Impossible times call for impossible solutions,” Cullen replies.

“ _An army of demons assembles in the west. I ask for no less than ten pikemen and ten archers,_ ” reads Leliana aloud. “ _By the Maker’s will, lend your support, lest we fail against the vicious horde._ I,” she says, shaking her head, “would not give you soldiers after reading this. I would take my family and flee to Rivain or whatever country might take me. They are _people_ , Cullen.”

“That is why we conscript,” Cullen almost snaps, his voice harsh. “That is why the practice _exists._ I did what I had to so we can do what we must.”

“Yes,” says Leliana, her voice perfectly soft and steady, “but you could have done _better._ ”

He whirls to face her, and Leliana goes on before he can speak. “Josephine is our _negotiator_ —she takes what we need and makes it into something the whole world wants.” She points to the fortress laid out in careful sketch on the table. “When you see that fortress, how many methods can you think of to breach it?”

“Six,” answers Cullen immediately. “Seven, really.”

“But you cannot see that when you look at this?” She sets the tablet down on the table, jabs a finger onto the words. “You see only procedure, only one way through?”

Cullen flushes, opens his mouth but is cut off when a scout enters, bowing and handing a letter to Leliana. It is a small piece of parchment, written in a rushed script.

“Josephine has a lead on siege equipment,” she says.

“From where?” Cullen asks, a wary eyebrow raised.

“Arl Wulff. He has family, I assume, in Jader,” Leliana finishes reading the letter, hands it over. “They have trebuchets.”

The letter reads: _Trebuchets & equip. from Jader to Adamant, ct. W. Last writing. We come quickly. – J._

Cullen cannot decipher the code, but Leliana supplies, “She will not be able to write again before she arrives.”

He stares at the letter, then stares at his own pile, and then down at the war table. It cannot be believed. 

“The Venatori spy?” he asks.

“Yes,” says Leliana.

“The double agent?”

“ _Yes,_ ” says Leliana.

He excuses himself for a time—he needs to talk to his captains about fighting demons, go over again how to steel the soldiers’ hearts against the horror, how to keep a squad together because it’s a completely different thing when demons are ripping at you and he will do whatever he can to make sure they are _ready_ , even if he cannot do this.

 

~~~

 

_Commander Cullen,_

_All I have are the sons and daughters of the villages on my land—they are not soldiers. You ask for much, and I pray you find what you seek. Walk in the Maker’s light._

 

~~~

 

Four days later, the Inquisitor returns with Arram and Blackwall and Vivienne, covered in dirt and barely able to get off her horse. It is late, past the midnight hour, and Leliana insists they wait until morning to meet at the war table. Both Cullen and the Inquisitor protest, but the spymaster will not be swayed. Trevelyan needs the sleep. Arram is particularly helpful in making this a reality, leading her off towards her quarters.  

Cullen rounds on Leliana as soon as Trevelyan has left the hall.

“You are delaying,” he nearly growls, “for the ambassador.”

“I am sure she will be here tomorrow,” Leliana says peaceably, adjusting one of her lavender gloves.

“You do not know that,” he says, bitterness and frustration eking into his voice. It is late, he hasn’t slept, his soldiers are that strange mix of terrified and hopeful and _believing in him_ that he struggles to swallow, struggles when he knows that it will be a hard-fought victory at best.

He knows this. It is the nature of his strength—leading the rank and file to act as one, to exist on this knife-thin edge of anticipation. Soldiers live their lives as sword in the sheath—never completely at rest, always ready for the draw and the blow and the strike and the blood. He is confident in their plan, if not entirely in their numbers. He knows what to do to ensure something like success.  He will make do and it will serve. It is what he _does._ It is what he is _made to do._

He has looked at the box of lyrium seven times in the past ten hours, only once more than the day before. That is a victory. _Remember that._ It is a victory.

“You are correct,” Leliana’s voice is mild as always, “but I trust Josephine.”

“Yet the Inquisitor is here, somehow, from the opposite side of _the world_ ,” Cullen grits out, ignoring her statement and the sting it awakens underneath his skin, “and she is not. She is not even a quarter of the same distance.”

“The Orlesians are verbose,” offers Leliana, “and notoriously difficult, and the king is not a man versed in subtlety. I would imagine she has her hands full.”

Cullen runs a hand over his face. “How is that more important?” he asks not only Leliana, but the Maker and Andraste herself. “ _How?_ ”

“Cullen—” attempts Leliana, but he shakes his head and turns away.

“She should be here,” he says. “It is unacceptable.”

Leliana follows him, but he holds up a hand, never slowing his stride. “She should be here,” he says, his voice hard as stone.

 

~~~

 

Cullen dreams that night of wind that screams from the west and rips Skyhold to pieces. When a cold draft sweeps in from the hole in his roof, he bolts awake. The lyrium scratches at his veins with brittle fingers until he falls asleep again.

 

~~~

  
  
He stands in his office, giving some last orders to his a crowd of runners gathered around his desk—instructions for the camp below before he must walk to the great hall and disappear into the war room to counsel the Inquisitor on their plan of action.

“Run the trainees through dodge-and-strike exercises,” he finishes the end of his lengthy list, “and get the foot soldiers more practice on those ladders. I want a plan of action for the battering ram team by this afternoon—no later. Report back this evening. Dismissed.”

When they flurry out of his office, he doesn’t expect one of them to come sprinting back. “The battlements, ser,” she calls through the open door. “Your attention is needed.”

He strides out, and Trevelyan and Arram are already there, bent over the stone.

“Cullen,” she asks, her voice puzzled, “what’s going on?”

A horde of soldiers swarms Skyhold’s gates—too many to estimate a count, and he only has a moment to glance down before the unmistakable sound of grinding iron and stone and wood signals his heart dropping into his stomach—

“Why are they—why are they opening the gate?” gasps the Inquisitor, and Cullen has already turned to run down the stone steps, hand on his sword. _They know better_ , his mind rages as he _sprints_ across the grass, he taught them _better_ than to just open Skyhold’s bridge to strangers—he can vaguely hear Arram and the Inquisitor behind him, but he is faster, borne on wings of years of instinct and fury and fear. He hears the _thud_ of the gate opening and hears Trevelyan yell out “ _Hold!_ ” and his sword is half drawn by the time he passes under the stone archways leading to the yard—and then he must, quite literally, slide to a stop on the wet cobblestones.

“Bloody hell,” says Arram, catching his breath at his shoulder.

Archers stand in a rainbow of crests and colors from lands and houses he cannot recognize, soldiers with spears tall enough to stab a giant in the belly in tight marching formation, a group of six elven warrior women hefting broadaxes to rival the Bull’s, and behind them are more soldiers, he can see their pikes and the tips of their bows and the rims of their shield and the sun, and _Maker’s breath_ , is that _howling_? It is, Cullen is sure of it: the sound of half a kennel’s worth of mabari.

They are from no single country or land—in fact, he can spot no more than five soldiers bearing the same colors or signet—but even a miracle can be patchwork.

Cullen realizes his jaw has dropped and his mouth is open—standing in fact, like a lunatic, when in the center of the commotion he spots, of all people, the ambassador, surrounded by what he realizes is _half the King’s royal guard_. He remembers their colors from stories when he was a boy. 

“King Alistair,” breathes Trevelyan, “was pleased with Josephine.”

“Yes,” says Cullen, because he can say nothing else.

She and her brown traveling cloak are filthy, covered in dust and dirt from the hard march of the road. He cannot tell the color of her shoes anymore. The ambassador dismounts her horse, and he hears delighted laughter from above his head—it is Leliana, descending the stairs.

“Josie!” Leliana calls, her voice brighter than he’s ever heard it. “My, my, but you’ve been busy.”

He watches, disarmed as though his sword were plucked from his hand and tossed off the mountain. At the sound of her voice, the ambassador turns to them—her hair is loose and messy, dark strands flying free in the wind from her braids. A smudge of dirt lines her cheekbone. Cullen can see the gold collar that rises high on her neck above her cloak. And she _beams_ , a smile as genuine and sincere and entirely warm as sunlight on a cold morning.

Arram claps him on the shoulder. “Ser,” he says, with a pointed glance. Cullen’s ears flush pink and puts his tongue back in his head. Trevelyan strides forward, alight with the glee of victory.

“They will need counting, Commander,” she calls over her shoulder, grinning.

“Yes,” says Cullen, because he can say nothing else. He finds his feet in the dizziness of relief, somehow, and walks forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why bring flowers when you can bring Fereldans? As always, your feedback is incredibly appreciated--the responses to this story have blown me away.  
> tumblr: klickitats


	6. bereft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josephine practices waiting. Cullen attempts gratitude.

The Orlesians never came, Josephine tells her colleagues once they’ve ensconced themselves in the war room. A labor of hours meant the new soldiers were both accounted for and settled in, and the noon sun rose high before they’d made it back inside Skyhold’s great hall. She’d paused in her office to try and tame her wind-swept hair, splash water on her face but it mattered so little. Perhaps it was having no sleep for more than a day, or the clean mountain air after weeks on dusty roads, or the sheer glee of this small victory—but Josephine is more than content to light one of her long red candles at the war table and _begin_ at last, at last, at last. She is ready.

“Truly?” echoes Leliana, fingering her chin. Josephine nods. “The skirmish turned into a full-out battle between Gaspard’s and Celene’s forces,” she explains.

“Haven’t they been at a stalemate for weeks?” asks the Inquisitor. She sits in her chair, long legs crossed and her hands in her lap. She looks like a child eager for a story.

 “Wayward messengers, I think,” says Josephine. “Runners lost along the way. Or perhaps it didn’t matter.” She shrugs. “Orlais abandoned the idea of peace talks soon after, I think, out of embarrassment.”

The Inquisitor can’t help her chuckle, Josephine sees.  The commander’s eyes are on the map—the only way she knows he heard is the way his eyebrow quirks. He moves pieces carefully with his right hand, a game of chess between himself and the world.

“The king and I spoke at length,” Josephine continues, shifting her weight from foot to foot, “as we waited. He finds the Inquisition—us, in particular—quite fascinating. And quite mad. And quite familiar,” she adds as afterthought. Leliana hides a smile that Josephine only just catches a sliver of, and grins widely in return.

“He _would_ know,” the spymaster murmurs, hands clasped behind her back.

“Indeed,” returns the ambassador. “When I received word of Adamant, he told me ‘armies are hard to come by,’ gave me half his escort, and apologized for keeping me from true work. He asked if he could call on me again—” At this, Leliana and Trevelyan give a firm nod in unison, a nod that means _excellent_ , “and sent me home.”

“But you didn’t come home.” The commander finally raises his golden head from the map, his eyes finding hers, and uses her words. For a moment she nearly tenses, but realizes—no, his tone does not accuse. Quite the opposite. It is low, and focused, and…a soft kind of curious.

“I went everywhere I could on my return,” she answers. “Every estate, every duchy, every city—I stopped and asked for aid with open hands.”

“That’s all?” Leliana murmurs, her query a gentle press. It is Josephine’s turn to clasp her hands behind her back. “To start,” she says mildly, “I told them of the Inquisition. I told them not of our troop numbers or our whispers, but—” She searches for a word. “Our story. How we search for answers. How we aim to shield this world from suffering. How we seek peace.”

A quiet falls over the war room, almost palpable. The commander says, “And they gave?”

“Yes,” Josephine says. Her eyes drift over the broad map on the war table, remembering each stop. It happened in such a flurry. “Fighters, pikemen, archers. Drifting groups of mercenaries found cause with us—that group of elven women came from an alienage.” She smiles a little. “A nobleman could only give wheat, but he gave ten bushels and promised more. Whatever they could. And I said thank you, I said—it is enough.”

She looks up and the commander is smiling. She blinks once, twice, again. It is no trick of the light or the Fade. He shakes his head, a gloved hand rising to rub at the back of his neck. “Well,” is all he says, before his gaze drops back to the map and the Inquisitor clears her throat.

“Perhaps,” Trevelyan says, leaning forward in her chair, “the three of you can walk me through how we plan to take out a massive army of demons in an ancient fortress.”

Leliana unfurls the map of old Adamant swiftly, and as the commander begins, all three lean in.

“Adamant is _quite_ ancient,” he says, “built to outlast both the savagery of the desert and the weight of years—but it will break.” As he begins to explain the movements of his siege, Josephine notices a spark and an energy that bristles within him—his passion for their forces finally getting a chance to stretch its muscles, she thinks. But Leliana brims with it too, a tide of anticipation on the heady edge of battle. Josephine’s own flame, fueled by exhaustion and utter readiness in the face of chaos, joins it seamlessly.  

“You want me to, I don’t know, just _elbow my way_ throughan ancient castle?” the Inquisitor asks, delicate eyebrows nearly touching her hairline. “Just shove in on a hope and a prayer?”

“Herald,” the commander says, and Josephine hears the dry amusement lining his voice, “The Inquisition does not simply _kick in the door_. We apply pressure here and here on this wall,” the commander says. “Breaking through the gate will be no mean feat, but it’s more than possible. And the walls are well made, but brittle enough.” He turns to Josephine. “And thanks to our lady ambassador…”

“Trebuchets,” she says with a smile. “From Arl Wulff’s sister-in-law in Jader. She was pleased to lend her siege equipment in our time of need.”

“Wulff—the double agent for the Venatori?” interrupts Trevelyan, and after Leliana affirms with a nod, she motions for him to continue.

“Breaching their defenses will not ensure victory,” continues the commander, “but a place like Adamant has never fallen. To lay waste to their gate will panic the Wardens. Once inside, you will lead a team through here to find Clarel.” He outlines a path with his finger. “If I had to guess, they’ll be here—it’s an open space, well-fortified. The path is winding but you will be able to move with some speed. Leliana is working to assemble a team to work through this passageway—“

“Small, quick, but hard-hitting,” Leliana says. “A knife instead of a battering ram to clear out the demons.”

The commander nods. “But without disturbing the focus of the battle. Troops need to follow easily. Perhaps—”

“The new elves,” says Josephine.

“Exactly,” affirms the commander. “Those axes will do well in cutting down a demon—”

“And swiftly enough to satisfy our need for silence,” Josephine finishes.

Leliana twirls one of her pieces between the fingers on her left hand. “Perfect,” she says.

“When the ambassador’s trebuchets break through here,” the commander indicates the spots on the map with quick taps of a gloved finger, “and Leliana’s team clears this passageway, and my soldiers make it up the walls, troops will flood Adamant in full from three touchpoints.” He pauses, considering the map. “It will be hard fought,” he admits. “By the skin of our teeth, perhaps.”

“It _is_ an army of demons,” reminds Leliana with a tiny smile.

“But we can break a way through,” says Josephine. “We can give you the time you need.”

“We can endure the horde,” the commander states, as though it is law. “You can make it to Clarel.”

The Inquisitor sits back in her chair, legs and arms crossed, considering the three of them. There is a long pause—and then she says, “Maker, what a marvel you three are.”

Leliana gives a hint of a smile, the commander drops his gaze and smirks, and Josephine laughs aloud.

“Perhaps,” says the commander, “we should not count our demons before their heads are severed.”

“The wisdom of templars,” Josephine murmurs.

“How refreshingly pragmatic,” Leliana sets her piece down on the table.  

The Inquisitor rises from her chair, shuts the door to the war room. “When can we ride out?” she asks.

“Three days,” answers the commander. Trevelyan returns, sits forward in her wooden chair, looks at the map and then up at the three of them. Her face has sobered considerably. The mood in the room changes, the world shifting under their feet.

“This second team,” she points to the map, “I want Leliana with them. If I am delayed, for whatever reason, I want someone prepared to take out Clarel and that Venatori. They will be much…quieter,” Trevelyan gives a ghost of a smile, “than I usually am. They’ll be able to act quickly.”

She sits back in her chair, regards the three of them. Josephine feels her colleagues attune to the Inquisitor in anticipation. “We are better prepared for something like this than I thought we would be,” Trevelyan admits. “I am proud of the work you’ve done. But I want Leliana with them. And if I want Leliana with them, we need to talk about succession.”

This is not unexpected, thinks Josephine. In fact, it is a wonder they’ve waited till now to discuss it—the Herald of Andraste is not immortal. “By all accounts, it is a huge army,” the Inquisitor continues. “An army that may overrun us, wipe us out.” She clears her throat. “If we do not return, Josephine will be left as head of the Inquisition.”

Oh. That is quite—well.

“I do not mean it as a slight to our plan,” Trevelyan says quickly, almost fumbling. “It is my wholehearted intention that we all return victorious. But we must remain…realistic. If we are to be razed and massacred…” She looks uncomfortable, as though speaking it aloud has finally made her realize what they could lose. The silence lingers—she feels Leliana and the commander looking at her. They wait for her to speak, she realizes.

“Your faith honors me,” Josephine says quietly. She sets her shoulders squarely, feeling the iron of her capability like armor, and smiles. “It is yet another impossible thing to prepare for, no?”

“We seem to have some skill at that,” murmurs the spymaster. The commander huffs out a breath that is nearly a chuckle. They are in agreement.

“I cannot take all the Inner Circle with me,” says Trevelyan. “We must leave a few key players with Josephine. The question is—who?”

“Varric,” Leliana and Josephine say at the same time, and the commander raises an eyebrow before nodding. “A valuable network of contacts,” he says, and Leliana nods.

It is not quite as vast as the spymaster’s, thinks Josephine, but would serve. She adds, “He will not want to be left behind as Ser Hawke rides off to battle, but I think I can convince him.” And Varric is quite wise, though to call him such a thing would earn you a remarkably colorful witticism about a number of Andraste’s assets.

“Perhaps Vivienne,” offers Trevelyan, “with her ties to Orlais and the Circle?”

Josephine shakes her head. “Vivienne’s connections are numerous and valuable, but I serve in that capacity. And that splendid sword of hers should be at Adamant.” Leliana makes a noise of agreement, murmuring a thought of using the mage on her strike team.

“Dorian,” says the commander suddenly. Josephine raises an eyebrow. “Connections to the Tevinter resistance,” he explains. “A growing resistance, I might add.”

“A wealth of knowledge about Tevinter politics, as well,” she muses aloud.

“Not to mention the Venatori,” adds Leliana. “Dorian, then.”

The Inquisitor nods her approval. A moment stretches between them, and then the commander says, “We must leave a warrior with the ambassador.” His tone brokers no argument.

“The Iron Bull?” offers Leliana, and the commander shakes his head. “We’re using the Chargers, and Bull will not be parted from them. Nor would I ask that of him,” he adds as afterthought.

“Perhaps Blackwall,” he says. The Inquisitor considers this idea. “He says he does not feel or fear the Calling,” she discloses, tapping her long fingers on the arm of her chair.

“It would be a poor time to be proven wrong,” the commander muses. “And if the Wardens are more susceptible to corruption…”

“He will not want to stay,” says Leliana. 

“None of them will,” the commander admits, “but they will understand. Cassandra is Seeker-trained and we will need her against demons. The Chargers and Bull are key in the second wave.”

“I will ask him myself,” Trevelyan assures. “I have a feeling he will understand the necessity.”

“Very well,” Josephine nods. "And he's our key to treaties set in place by the Wardens. I can make do with this.”

“I allotted enough soldiers to stay behind to ensure Skyhold’s defense,” mentions the commander, his hands on the pommel of his sword. “I will be sure they are capable of protecting those who remain here.”

“Then we have a plan,” Trevelyan finishes, looking meaningfully at Josephine. She sees the unspoken question in the Inquisitor’s eyes, and shapes the tone of her voice to comfort.

“We will await your return,” she says, “and carry on if you do not.” The words hold more iron than she intended, but it seems to soothe Trevelyan even so.

“Very well.” The Inquisitor clasps her hands, looking pleased in spite of herself. “We shall conclude for the moment. Cullen, I’d like you to walk me through your revisions to the troop movements.”

Josephine licks her fingers, puts out her red candle. Out of her periphery, she sees him open and close his mouth—does he glance at her?—before nodding to Trevelyan and walking out of the war room alongside her with long strides.

She has no time to think of it. “Come here, _chérie_ ,” says Leliana, gliding around the table and taking her arm. “I have something for you.”

“Oh?”

“A surprise for a surprise,” her friend says with a little smile, walking through the hall and in the direction of Josephine’s room. “You deserve it, I think, after all that.”

She almost blushes. “I should have written,” she says. “I could have found the time.”

“I will not hear you apologize,” Leliana chuckles, “for doing the work of giants.”   

When Leliana deposits her at her room, Josephine discovers the copper tub filled with steaming hot water and nearly weeps. She only falls asleep in the water once.

 

~~~

 

The next three days pass in pure flurry—Josephine’s letters cover her desk in incredible piles in a never-ending game of catching up, and, well, there is the siege to prepare for. It is she who ends up delivering the news to Varric, Dorian, and Blackwall—the latter two take it well as can be expected, but it is Varric who looks down to hide the way that carves him up inside. It was not her intention to speak to him the night before the troops leave, but Trevelyan had asked her at the last moment before heading down to the camps below Skyhold.

“I am sorry,” she says quietly. They are in their usual places: a table in front of a roaring fire in the deep night of the Frostbacks. It’s not as quiet—nobody sleeps when preparing for a siege—but the familiarity of it cloaks them all the same. “I know you want to go with Ser Hawke, but—it is a plan of contingency, not judgment on your skill.”

“I know that,” Varric answers roughly, sighs. “Shit. Can’t be helped, can it?”

Josephine shakes her head. “Forgive me,” she gently touches his hand across the table. “I don’t mean to cause you worry.”

“You?” Varric snorts. “No, Ruffles, it’s not you that makes me worry.”  And Josephine knows that well, knows that Varric’s worries are blue-eyed and black of hair.

A scout slides through the doors to the great hall and approaches them, dressed in Inquisition leathers; he bows to the two of them. “I apologize for interrupting, my lady,” he says, “but Commander Cullen would like you to stop by his office, whenever you have a spare moment.”

“Oh.” Josephine blinks. “Of course.” He salutes, arm across his breast, and leaves the way he came. Varric is attempting to hide a smile. When Josephine raises an eyebrow at the dwarf, he just shakes his head.

“Go,” he says. “I’m sure he has orders for how to tuck his soldiers in at bedtime.” And Josephine can’t help but laugh a little.

The door to the commander’s office is open when Josephine pads across the stone walkway. It’s nearly midnight, and the sky above the mountain is patterned with tiny stars. It reminds her of the little white flowers that grow next to the steps up to her parents’ house, _old queen’s breath_.

When the toes of her shoes touch the threshold, she notices the commander is surrounded by soldiers. Between helmeted heads and metal shoulders, she can just see his pale face, a little of the fur mantle of his coat. He is running through plans at length with his soldiers; he is lit, Josephine sees, by the same fire she saw at the war table three days ago. His countenance brims with it.  

“I want soldiers marching by daybreak,” says the commander. “Will they rise?”

“The archers sleep with bows in hand, _messere_ ,” echoes a man with a thick Starkhaven brogue.

There is a soft clang as a hand clad in metal salutes her colleague. “The swords wait in their sheaths, Commander.” A soft chorus of other voices say _aye, aye_ and salute in turn.

Another voice, gruff and thick, accompanied by the clanking of pounds and pounds of full plate armor. “The templar unit awaits orders, sir, if the Maker’s will be done.”

“The Chargers are ready, ser,” Josephine recognizes Krem’s low voice, “horns and all.”

“And mages?” prompts the commander. She almost didn’t see Fiona, but there she is, elven and robe-clad and arms folded. She inclines her head. “The teams are ready, Commander, with fire for the Fade.”

“Good,” he says, in a tone that is rich and satisfied. “Rest, and I shall see you on the morrow for the march.”

They salute, parting and retreating through all three of the doors to the commander’s office. Josephine quickly sidesteps in, nodding to the handful of soldiers who pass her and bow their heads. She watches them go—it is fascinating to know these men and women are the connections of their army, passing along messages like spiders plucking at strings in a web, and all move in tandem. 

The commander’s voice pulls her out of deep thought. “Ambassador,” he says, something like a greeting. He stands behind his desk, hand ever-present on the pommel of his sword.

“Commander,” she returns, smoothing her skirts and approaching him with careful steps. She always treads carefully in this room, and this time she has no Orlesian to speak or flowers in her hand. “You requested me?”

“I did,” he says, beckoning her to come closer. Josephine finds herself in front of his desk. “I hope it is not too late.”

“Not at all,” Josephine shakes her head. “The evening is young for me still. And for you, I would imagine.” She clasps her hands behind her back.

“Indeed.” He glances down at his papers, as though he is looking for a hint as to how to continue. “I wanted to talk to you about who I am leaving,” he says, finally, and Josephine blinks.

“Troops,” he explains. “I am leaving you a handful of capable lieutenants, but Ser Manon will your main contact.”

The Orlesian with the spinning longswords, Josephine remembers, arching an eyebrow. “You will not take her with you?” she inquires. “She seems so skilled.”

“She is new to leadership,” the commander explains, “but has such potential—and her abilities with a sword are exceptional. She will do well here, with you.”

“If you are sure,” Josephine does not want to let doubt creep into her voice, but cannot help it. “I do not want you to feel as though you must leave someone you need on the field—“

The commander shakes his head firmly. “She will check in with you at least once a day, as is necessary. I’ve asked her to handle training and discipline while we are gone, and to call on Blackwall for an extra hand.”

“He would appreciate that,” Josephine admits. “The Inquisitor told me he prefers to remain as active as he can when he’s at Skyhold.”

“Understandable.” The commander fingers the pommel of his sword idly.

There is a long pause between them, and Josephine must ask: “Are you—are you truly sure?” He furrows his brow. “If she is vital to your plan, if you need her, if you are in any way bereft—“

“Bereft?” The commander stares at her with wide hazel eyes, and all his muscles stiffen. “ _Bereft?_ You cannot be serious.”

Something flares in Josephine, and her fingers tighten. “I only want to make sure you have what you _need_ for the machinations of your siege,” her voice is harder than she wants, “not to imply—”

“Ambassador, please,” the commander shakes his head, and something in his voice makes Josephine pause. “Forgive me. You only—” A gloved hand rises, and he rubs the back of his neck. “You dropped an army at my door,” he says, his voice quieter than usual. “I did not think—we are hardly bereft of soldiers. Quite the opposite.”

He pauses, and his eyes flick back and forth—Josephine knows this habit now, and it is when he is searching for words. Words that he typically volleys like a boulder from a trebuchet, with little consideration of cost or consequence. She knows only too well what has been said in this office before, what he has said to _her_ , what he has meant about her passion and her dealings and _her work_ and how such a thing should not be borne, and—

“I meant to thank you,” he says, finally, simply.

Oh.

“This fight is different now—more evenhanded, flexible, _better._ Because of your efforts. Because of what you did.” He looks at her for a moment before his eyes drop to the desk. “I meant to say so before this moment, but these past three days have been endless. Yet that is not an excuse.” He clears his throat quietly, meets her eyes. “You have my gratitude.”

Josephine’s diplomacy answers for her. “It is what I do,” she says. “I did all I could.”

“I attempted what you did with less success than if one of Leliana’s crows had attempted to put pen to paper,” the commander returns dryly, and the surprise of such a comment sets her to smiling before she knows it.

“Surely,” Josephine tilts her head, “your penmanship was better.”

The commander snorts, a most human thing, and Josephine cannot remember if he has ever done it in her presence. “Debatable,” he says.

The feeling under her feet is one of untouched ground—the same as when she steps into a foreign country for the first time, where all the language is new and strange and even the clouds in the sky seem to dip and stretch in ways completely different.

“At any rate,” Josephine remarks, “you were right about one thing.” She wiggles the fingers of one hand at him. He looks confused.

“The mabari,” she says. “You were right. He liked that.” It had been wet, slightly sticky, and there were paw marks on her dress but it had been quite worth it in the scales of Josephine’s ledger.  

“I am sure that was not what swayed the tide in your favor,” he responds, “but it is good to know he is a Fereldan through and through.”

“He loves his country,” Josephine remembers, “and he has a kind smile. You can tell he wasn’t raised to be king.” It was refreshing, to deal with a monarch so earnest, as well as slightly terrifying when she tried to picture him playing the Game. “And he called us—a motley assortment.” Most fondly, too.  

“Not untrue,” says the commander, “but I find we are so piecemeal that cultivating unity is easier than I thought it would be. They find it on their own.”

“So they will serve, then?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. She wonders why she is testing him. “This piecemeal Inquisition? The motley assortment?”

“More than,” the commander reassures. “Enough, I think, if the Maker is willing, to make sure the Inquisitor returns victorious.”

So that black future they spoke of in the war room does not come to pass, she muses. By the brief look that crosses his face, she knows he thinks the same.

“They are just soldiers,” she says, and she means it as some way of smoothing it over. “Not gods. We will do all we can, and perhaps more.”

The commander makes a sound of disagreement; she wonders if she has insulted his soldiers again on accident, but as she opens her mouth he is quicker. “Yes,” he says, “but you have given hope, Ambassador, where before there was…” He struggles for a word. “Need. Duty.”

Josephine only replies, “You speak of the Inquisitor, I think.” She tucks a strand of black hair behind her ear. “That lies in her hands.”

The commander only shakes his head. “It is a rare thing,” he says quietly, an admittance rather than an argument.

They stand for a moment in the silence, before Josephine speaks. “I will take my leave,” she tells him, “so you may consider sleep before the dawn.”

“According to the Inquisitor,” says the commander, “that is not something I seem to require.”

“All the same,” Josephine returns, “consider it.”

She bows her head and he bids her goodnight, closing the door behind her as she sets out on the stone walkway back to the great hall.

It is not penance, it is not something that erases all the foulness and the dialogue that has rankled her for _days_ on end. It does not erase the past. It does not make his snarling meaningless. Perhaps it is a plank on a bridge. Perhaps it is something new.

Josephine does not know what, and as she heads back into her office, back to her mountains of letters, there is little time to think on such a thing.

 

~~~

 

In the quiet, dark hours of the morning, Josephine finds Leliana in her rookery. The goodbye is without dramatics—they embrace, Josephine muffles a _please be careful_ into her shoulder, and Leliana presses her cheek to the top of her head.

“I shall bring you back a pride demon’s head,” promises the spymaster cheerfully, “to mount on the wall of your office. You need something above the fireplace to tie the room together.”

“Please don’t,” Josephine says, squeezing her arm.

 

~~~

 

She feels like she owes it to the Inquisition to watch them ride out, and she does. Up on battlements she leans against the stone, wedged into the space. Varric, Dorian, and Blackwall join her after a fashion, as she watches unit after unit march on.

The Inquisitor is near the front on her great white steed, staff glinting in the sunlight. There is Arram, tall and silver, all his black hair wrangled into a knot. Rows of pikemen, tightly formed, and leagues of archers, scores of swords and shields in the shadow of the mountain. And the Chargers, roaring a quite bawdy song that several of the nearby soldiers lend their voices to—the sight and sound makes all four of them chuckle when the wind carries their notes up the walls of Skyhold. She cannot see Leliana, though she knows this is by design. She spots the lovely points of Vivienne’s headgear, as elegant as snowcapped mountains themselves. Josephine envies the confidence and poise of her shoulders.

She sees the commander, after a time, directing from atop a high wall. After most of their army has marched down through the pass, she spots him atop a black charger, winding through soldiers carefully, the horse’s mane blowing in the strong wind.

He looks up, and back at their stone fortress. Somehow, across the distance, she realizes he has spotted her and the company on the battlement. He pulls at the reins and the horse pauses, and he turns towards Skyhold in the saddle.

Josephine raises an eyebrow, and then the commander crosses an arm over his chest, his closed fist pressing against armor and cloth. A salute.

Varric snorts and waves, wiggling his fingers, and Blackwall gives a proper salute in return, his fist thumping against his leathers. Dorian gives an ostentatious bow, sparks of blue and red flying from his fingers as he stands up. She automatically bows in return, a slight, elegant bend of the head, shoulders and back. And when she opens her eyes he is turning in his saddle, pressing his steed on, and Josephine is not certain, for the second time in three days, if this is a trick of the light or the Fade.

They stand, watching the march until Varric looks up at her and says, “Well, Ruffles?”

She nods, and leads them back down into Skyhold.

 

~~~

 

There is a reason Josephine is rarely seen without her tablet and its ever-present red candle. There is a reason one can barely make the ambassador cease writing, even in the middle of a conversation. There is a reason her agents are the busiest in all the Inquisition, a ceaseless dance of missive delivery and careful observation.

Josephine _hates_ waiting.

Waiting for letters to return. Waiting for dignitaries to arrive. Waiting for the next word, the next moment in negotiation. It is something she never reveals, and the duality of her patience and impatience is truly the perfect kind—a balm against struggle and an impetus for change. Josephine never waits too long, only as long as she should. It bolsters and protects her in this strange game she has dedicated her life to: it makes her rise in the morning and fall asleep at her desk after midnight. All are tactics to alleviate the _waiting_ it all requires.

And this—this is the worst kind.

She fights against it, busies herself with what she can do while the Inquisitor and her colleagues are away. She walks through all the halls with Gatsi—there’s not enough stone to build, still, just repairs, but she sets him to installing Inquisition glass in the great hall, sends workers with care to the rafters to ensure against snow and wind, visits Dagna with Dorian and an old book he’s dug up to talk about just how Alexius made that amulet—Josephine only half-understands it but it’s fascinating all the same. In the morning, she walks with Blackwall on the battlements; in the evening, she finds Varric at their usual table by the fire and they talk and sip wine or play cards for a while before Josephine must return to her desk.

Skyhold is so much quieter now—even though almost all the troops camped below, they are missed most palpably. They have been gone for two weeks, and Leliana has sent word almost every day of their progress—marching across Orlais, crossing this or that river, nearly there. It has been two days since the last missive.

She walks the battlements with Blackwall, as has become their routine, in the early morning when the air is still touched by the chill. A scout pants his way up the stairs, finds them and presses a rolled-up parchment in her hand, freshly delivered from a raven. She opens it:

_We strike on the morrow. Leliana would write but is in position. Will send word as able._

_There are rather more demons than we’d hoped, but we are ready._

— _C_

At Blackwall’s inquiring look, she hands him the parchment, and turns to face the mountains, hands folded. She hears him crumple the parchment and the heavy footfall of his boots as he moves to stand next to her.

They are quick, but it takes _time_ for a raven to span all of Orlais. On this cold grey morning, cold enough she will stand next to the fire when she goes back to her office, her friends draw sword and tooth and staff against demons, hordes of them, while she stands here. Breathes. Watches the soft puffs of her breath turn white and vanish.

The world is ending, Josephine must remind herself on a daily basis, when the impossible has become the everyday.

 

~~~

 

Adan walks her through patches of elfroot and embrium, his sentences short and sparse. Josephine appreciates this deeply about him—he cannot waste a single breath mincing a word. His harshness offended her once (Haven feels like _years_ ago), but she has learned since, in Varric’s word, that his smiles are reserved for idiots.

He talks her through how much elfroot you need to make a healing potion. It’s less than she thought, and he describes how to temper it, how to make a poultice of it in the wild, what it does when mixed in viscous liquid with other herbs.

“One leaf,” he says, “can do a bloody _lot._ Closest thing I’ve seen to magic, and we’ve mages out the arse here.”

More than anything else, this comforts her. She isn’t sure why, quite.

 

~~~

 

She goes to the chantry with a handful of her long, red candles. Opening the door, she nearly drops them at the sight of Varric, who stands in front of Andraste, hands on his hips, a kind of solid defiance.

“Ruffles,” he says without turning. Josephine shuts the door behind them.

“How did you know it was me?” she asks, and he snorts.

“Your clothes make this little sound,” he answers, “the writer in me says a _susurrus._ Ironic, given all your little murmurings across Thedas.”

“Ah,” she replies, standing next to him. The many candles on the steps to her altar lit the room with a soft glow. “If my clothes give so much away, perhaps I am a poor collector of whispers.”

“Hardly,” Varric says with a sigh, and then falls silent. Josephine did not know he was an Andrastean, but finds it all a rather poor time to discuss it. Instead, she simply offers her handful of candles. He considers them, pulls out one. And then a second, after a few heartbeats.

He lights them, placing them gently upon the steps. Josephine kneels, placing three candles in a triangle shape. Five seemed a round, good number, but three will suffice. After she kneels, she bows her head. Varric doesn’t kneel—he looks defiantly at the Maker’s Bride, as though daring her to take what he has claimed as under his protection from this earthly plane.

She would expect nothing less. But Josephine, she speaks the language she knows best. She opens her palms, her hands resting in her lap, and _asks._

 

~~~

 

 _Victory,_ chérie. _We ride home on the morrow. Ser Hawke’s warden has fallen—but we are whole._

_We bring the remaining wardens home on the Inquisitor’s command, two hundred or so. Could you find space for them somewhere?_

— _L_

Varric and Dorian drag her into the Herald’s Rest when they hear the news—Josephine partakes of some sweet red tea with brandy in it, and gives Varric and Dorian one of the good bottles from the cellar. It’s one of the best ones, actually, but she doesn’t think the Inquisitor will begrudge them their swigs of wine, their rousing toasts, their pink cheeks, and their sheer relief.

 

~~~

 

Two weeks later, Josephine stands on the battlements again. It has been over a month, and the air has turned sharper, colder. It is a gloomy day with brief moments of pale sunlight peeking through steel clouds, and the first of the soldiers come through the pass. Far above them, Josephine breathes a sigh of relief. She feels tension that cemented the four of them in place, here, together, dissipate.

Noise rises from below—conversation, hoarse yelling and cheering, and a great deal of singing. The Inquisitor rides in, leading them home, waving up at Josephine and company with both hands, grinning ear to ear. Arram leans in next to her on his giant horse—the biggest horse Skyhold has—and plants a kiss on her cheek, and she swats him away. The Iron Bull bellows something from behind them that makes Trevelyan squeak (she can’t hear it, but Josephine knows the look on her face). Dorian waves his hands and wisps, light and sweet and golden, fall from the battlements over the soldiers. Their laughter bubbles, rises, and they grin, waving their fingers through them.

Their numbers have thinned—not considerably, but they have lost soldiers. In the center of their great procession are the Grey Wardens (Josephine can see their blue and silver), surrounded by Inquisition soldiers. For a moment, Josephine thinks it is out of fear of what the wardens might do, as though they might suddenly erupt into demonic personage…but as she sees them trudge across the bridge, sees the heaviness of their feet, she realizes it is because without the Inquisition, the Grey Wardens might find themselves hunted across Thedas. It’s a little like a cocoon.

On the outside of the circle rides the commander on his great charger, keeping an even and protective pace. There’s something about the way he watches over them, nods to his captains, makes sure his horse trots in pace with their slower steps that radiates safety and peaceful passage.

Beside her, Blackwall gives a terse sigh. “They will be safe here,” she reminds gently. He nods, his gruffness keeping him quiet.

When she looks back down, she finds the commander looking up at them. He salutes, an arm across his breast, and they repeat the motions of a month ago in perfect symmetry. When she comes up, he nods to her, and then they disappear under Skyhold’s arches. Josephine has posted aides and agents there already to direct troops and lead the wardens to where they’ll stay for now, but she decides she cannot stand and wait any longer, and heads below.

Her aides perform their duties beautifully—Calla, her favorite aide, greets each Grey Warden with an understanding smile and instructions as to where to find where they will lay their heads. Dennet is there assisting with mounts, and Blackwall goes to help him immediately. In the fray, Josephine spots a tall elven warden with salt-and-pepper hair, standing still amongst the chaos, looking up at Skyhold’s massive stone towers.

He looks so lost. Josephine winds her way through the crowd, takes his arm gently, and leads him without a word to where he needs to go.

 

~~~

 

She finds Leliana later in the rookery to tackle her in a brief embrace, and of course, to parse the details of her month-long journey.

They end up sitting for two hours, Leliana leaning against the windowsill and Josephine perched on an old crate as they spymaster weaves the tale. The assault on Adamant. The betrayal of the Grey Wardens. The way the Fade ripped open, sewed itself shut, and ripped open again.

“We were doing well, all things considered,” she says, “until the Archdemon made an appearance. That was rather difficult. But we broke the fortress with speed and force in equal measure.”

“Then the siege plan was sound?” Josephine inquires, chin in hand.

“How did Krem say it?” Leliana chuckles. “’Cullen put up those ladders like he’d been doing it his whole life.’ They broke the gate, went over the walls, and I came in from the back. The demons were…plentiful. But the soldiers did not hesitate.”

The ambassador nods, looking thoughtful. “Mostly,” she admits, “I am glad you are all alive and returned.”

“Did you enjoy being Skyhold’s queen for six weeks? The glass looks lovely,” Leliana asks, smiling delicately. Josephine rolls her eyes. The spymaster pats her shoulder.

“We both know,” says Josephine, “that in the event of such an election for that title, Scout Harding would undoubtedly come out the winner.” She pauses. “Or perhaps Vivienne.”

“It would be close,” agrees Leliana.

 

~~~

 

Late in the evening, Josephine rubs at her eyes over her latest letter. The day has been long, long, long. And the pure relief of having the Inquisitor and her fellows safely wrapped in Skyhold’s stone walls is better than any fire or bed, truly. But Josephine feels exhaustion prickle at her feet and legs like a pesky cat.

There is a knock at the door.

“Come in,” she calls out, and blinks when the commander pokes his golden head around her heavy wooden door.

“Am I disturbing you?” he asks. She shakes her head, waves him in, too surprised to rise from her desk chair.

“I thought you would be at rest,” she admits. “You have been marching for days.”

He shrugs. “Another hour will not make much difference,” he tells her. “I was visiting the Grey Wardens. They are settling in best they can.”

Josephine nods, rests her elbows on her desk. “Are they alright?” she asks, knowing the problem is too complex for such a simple question.

“No,” he answers, and at least he is honest. “But I hope—I hope they _can_ be, with time and structure.” He fingers the pommel of his sword.

Josephine nods, and after a moment of silence, she coughs. “You wanted to call on me?”

“Oh! I—yes,” the commander nearly stammers. “I’d forgotten. This is for you.” He reaches into the pocket of his surcoat and fishes something out.

He sets a rock on her desk, gray and white and gritty.

Josephine stares at it.

The commander clears his throat, and then coughs, and then drapes his wrists over the pommel of his sword. Josephine cannot even stop staring at it long enough to give him a pointed glance, to indicate he needs to start speaking _immediately._

“On our return from Adamant,” he says, finally, “I went out with a scouting group of soldiers most nights to see what we could find. We were fruitful.” He nearly smiles.

Josephine finally looks up. “A quest for what, exactly?” she says faintly, wondering if this is some hallucination of sleep-deprivation.

“Stone,” he says, almost cheery, and— _oh._ Oh. It all falls into place.

“How much?” she manages.

“Eight quarries worth," he answers, and she blinks once, twice. “Of varying size, of course. It took some searching, but,” he shrugs, “we found what we were looking for.”

She looks at the stone sitting on her desk, then back at him. The commander goes on speaking, as though the silence is a little too much to bear. “Our soldiers guarded companies of caravans at Haven,” he begins, “and when I reached out to them, they were happy to help, as long as we could provide the men to accompany them. And I certainly can.”

“So we will have stone,” she repeats. The commander nods. “Yes,” he says. “Enough for a start, I hope?”

Josephine looks again at the stone on her desk, and her eyes flick back up to his face. He looks away. Eight quarries. Maker. “Yes,” she says. “A start, certainly.” She narrows her eyes, remembering the heat of their argument about this topic in this very spot weeks and weeks ago. _All the land in Orlais belongs to someone._

“You have permission, then,” she says, “from landholders?”

The commander nods. “Most were just very grateful we had halted an army of demons from razing across their country,” he admits. “That did most of the talking for me, I think. I just offered the arms and the legwork.” The way his ears flush a little indicates that he probably _was_ forced to do some talking, and that it probably didn’t end ideally, and that there are probably a few quarries scattered about Orlais that will never belong to the Inquisition.

He continues again in the long pause that stretches between them, rushing, stammering. “I—I know you planned to do this yourself,” he says, “and, Maker, I didn’t mean to overstep. I’m sorry if I did. I just—I was there, and I wanted to.”

There is silence for a breath or two and before he can say anything else, Josephine speaks (or, well, _blurts_ ), “Why?” There is a great deal in that syllable.

He stills, drops his gaze. Josephine waits, hands folded on her desk. “It seems,” he finally says, voice low, “that because of my actions we went without something you needed, something the Inquisition needed. And that was—well. Unnecessary of me.” He furrows his brow. “If I handed down different orders, imagined another way—”

“Listened,” Josephine says, before she can stop herself. That is a blow, she thinks, and now she must be ready to fight. But he rubs the back of his neck instead, just a hint of a smile outlining his mouth. He looks almost—sheepish. That is the word.

“Yes,” he says. “That.”

A silence lies between them. “I hope to make amends,” the commander ventures, quietly. “Or at least begin. I am a commander still because of your work.” He bows a little, taking a few steps back from her desk. Beating a retreat, Josephine notices, from this place where he has no experience, despite an admittedly valiant effort. “Goodnight, Ambassador.”

“Goodnight,” says Josephine, and then she is alone in her office, holding a handful of limestone, remembering most keenly that the world is ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brb while I go write a really intense AU where Josie becomes Inquisitor with those three as her advisors...also, forgive me if the war table stuff is too much. I just can't imagine that Cullen's Adamant plan is, "We'll just knock down the gate and send a tiny team of five people in to kill a bunch of desperate Grey Wardens, a league of demons, and a Venatori sorcerer." Nope.  
> A thousand thanks for the feedback you all leave me. (places rock on your desk)  
> tumblr: klickitats


	7. practice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josephine and Cullen make progress in the name of education. 
> 
> All the thanks go to sunspeared, beta extraordinaire.

Cullen’s day starts fresh, clean as new linen. He wakes without the morning _shove_ of nightmares and just early enough before dawn to sharpen his sword and polish his armor in the Maker-blessed quiet. The lack of lyrium only purrs along his veins, soft enough there’s no shakes. The rosy sunrise hides behind the thick gauze of early winter clouds. All of Skyhold seems held in perpetual hush, as though everyone has rolled over to take a few more moments of sleep. This pleases Cullen—well-deserved rest, he thinks, for those in the barracks and the camps.

He stops by the kennels, constructed while the Inquisition’s army hammered at demons in the desert. Rory is the Inquisition’s kennelmaster, sent alongside the handful of mabari from a noble house with no soldiers to spare. The mabari were gift enough, but this young man of not even twenty years is better with them than anyone Cullen has ever met. He speaks with a merciless stutter that occasionally disappears after they have talked for a long while. It is never present when he speaks to the dogs. (He cannot help but wonder if this is why he was sent away and grinds his teeth at the thought.) Cullen always listens, patient as the grave. He was a stammering youth in armor too big for him, once. 

This morning, Rory nearly drags him in to see a big female with brutal shoulders and no tail. He calls her Loghain. (“Really?” Cullen remarked the first time, an eyebrow raised. “Ruthless,” Rory replies, mirroring his brow.)  Loghain is pregnant, and soon enough the Inquisition’s kennels will see their first litter of pups. Grinning news for a good morning. 

When Cullen opens the door to the war room, it’s the way Leliana glances over him with all the brevity in the world that signals the beginnings of a pleasant day are abruptly _over._ She’s whispering in the Inquisitor’s ear, hooded head tilted just so. The ambassador scribbles at a letter, eyes flicking up at him briefly and then back down to the page, but with none of the calculation. The Inquisitor and spymaster part—Leliana rests her hands on the table, and Trevelyan smiles at him, bids him good morning.  

“And yourself, Inquisitor,” Cullen says as he takes his place at the table, a hand resting on his sword. The ambassador lights a candle and then they begin, too swiftly for him to think on it overmuch.

It’s a brief meeting, only a few hours—Josephine is working on an invitation to the Winter Palace in order to save the empress from swift assassination, but it’s taking time. The Inquisitor makes Jean-Gaspard the Duke of Lydes and informs them of a brief sojourn she, Vivienne, Solas, and Bull are taking to the Exalted Plains on the morrow. Leliana offers to track down the Hero of Ferelden—a heavy prospect demanding time and resources. The way Leliana describes the worth of making contact with her results in a unanimous _yes_ among the four of them.

It’s rather peaceful for a war table meeting. Cullen wonders if he was mistaken when the ambassador puts out her candle. Leliana takes her arm and walks out with her, deep in conversation about a lord whose name Cullen could not pronounce under pain of death. He turns to leave, and the Inquisitor says, “Ah, Cullen—a moment?”

He pauses. “Of course,” he says, and when Trevelyan opens her mouth, he realizes Leliana feinted the blow.

“This ball,” she begins, hands behind her back, “at the Winter Palace. We will all need to be there.”

He blinks. “The—wait,” he furrows his brow, “What do you mean by all?”

“I mean you.” He must give her credit for her nonchalance. “The spymaster, the commander, the ambassador, the Inquisitor. All must be present. Leliana is sure of it.”

“You don’t want me there,” is Cullen’s immediate response. And then he falters, trying not to be rude. “I am a credit to no one in that kind of situation,” he explains. “No training, no practice, I don’t dance—”

“More training than I did,” Trevelyan corrects with a wry smile. “There is ceremony amongst the templars, yes? Especially among their captains and commanders.”

“That is different—” Cullen splutters, but she continues on as though he hasn’t spoken.

“And dancing,” she says, “is not required or necessary, since being twirled around on the parquet floor makes a poor, poor vantage point for security.”

“I have no framework for this,” he retorts, refusing to yield. “No experience.”

“You will,” Trevelyan smiles.

 

~~~

Night. Cullen sits in his chair, steeples his fingers, and fumes.

Lessons. That’s how Trevelyan had put it. _Someone will be by tonight to start lessons with you._ And then she had paused. _Thank you._ Andraste preserve him. He idly rubs at a twinging muscle in his thigh, an ache that never really goes away. A cup of black tea with sugar (he never asks for it, but it always appears on his desk in the evening hours) steams, untouched.

Perhaps he can convince whoever she sends that he will be beyond hope. Perhaps it will be Leliana—that would explain the look—or Vivienne, although he doubts he has the power to convince either of them of anything, and the thoughts of those two trying to teach him six different ways to bow makes him want his shield, and _Maker,_ he’s a _grown man,_ and—there is a knock at the door.

“Come in,” is his traditionally curt reply. The heavy door creaks open, and a dark head appears from behind the wood.

He blinks. “Ambassador,” he says.

“Commander,” she returns in lieu of greeting, turning to shut the door, and Cullen remembers standing at the threshold of her office, unseen. Watching her gently dip Trevelyan at the end of a dance, easy as breathing.

She approaches his desk. “I suppose you know about this…arrangement?” she asks, her hands clasped behind her back. There’s a long pause, and then Cullen realizes he needs to nod.

“Leliana asked me to teach you,” she continues, “and I will. It takes time, of course, we must meet fairly often—”

Cullen raises a hand, unable to let her waste more of her time. “Ambassador,” he interrupts, “you must see that this is a fool’s game.”

She tilts her head, looking down at him. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“There is no need for me to attend such a thing,” he says, folding his hands on his desk. Cullen seeks not to crack the precarious peace between them in two. “I am needed here.”

Josephine raises an eyebrow. “You are needed there,” she replies mildly. “Do you plan on locking yourself up in this tower until we leave you behind?”

 _Perhaps._ “I cannot do it,” he grits out. “It is unnecessary.”  

Her eyes widen a little, and it is a moment before she can speak. “Unnecessary,” she says mildly, but her shoulders tense into hard, stiff lines, “or _unimportant?_ ”

“No,” Cullen protests, rising immediately from his chair, “that is not what I said.”

“But that is what I hear, Commander.” She rubs the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “You take such care in the training and safety of all the men and women camped below Skyhold—can you not see you represent them, too?”

“That is the Inquisitor,” Cullen says, taken aback.

“She is all of us,” the ambassador retorts, “but you are the army. Your army destroyed the horde of demons that would have flattened Orlais.”

A thought, unbidden, pops into Cullen’s head: _our army._ He pushes it away just as quick. “I can do more here,” he begins, though he knows that ship has sailed. “One of us must stay at Skyhold. It should be me."

“We will find a way.” Josephine waves her hand. “And we are not riding into battle. Well.” She pauses, and if Cullen isn’t mistaken, she looks amused. “A battle of a different sort,” she decides.

“A battle for which I am ill-prepared, with no strategy or tactics,” he parries, pressing his palms flat against his desk.

She sighs, tilting her head. “Commander,” she begins, patient, “if you do not go, you tell Orlais our forces do not care, and worse, that they do not matter. Is that what you wish to say?”

“No,” growls Cullen, and the back of his neck prickles with flush. “I only know this is not a battle I can fight, and I would not shame the Inquisition. Not for all the world.”  

A silence stretches between them. Josephine gives another sigh, and Cullen is ready for the blow, because he knows he is a fool, but he will not pretend to be enough when he is decidedly not.

But when she speaks, her voice has softened. “Then let me give you a sword,” she tells him. “Let me show you the field. Trust me.”

Cullen looks up at her, and sees that the curve of her lips has turned up, just a little. She is laughing at him, to be sure, but there’s nothing cruel in it. “You can’t be worse than Trevelyan,” she admits, and Cullen cocks his head. “I have been working with her since the day after we named her Inquisitor.” She shakes her head ruefully. “I have no intention of letting either of you set foot in the Winter Palace until you are ready.”

“Are you sure?” Cullen asks without thinking.

“Of course,” she says, raising a brow. “That is, if we can begin tonight, instead of bickering till dawn.” He cannot help but nod in agreement, and realizes all of a sudden that he has nodded his consent to her plan.

Josephine pauses, glancing about his office. There is nowhere to sit, Cullen realizes. By rank, all soldiers must stand in his presence because he is commander, and Trevelyan can’t sit still at all, so there’s never been a reason. But before he can move, she hefts a stack of books off a stool and pulls it over. She sits rather low, her head and shoulders just above the desk.

“The first thing,” she begins, unruffled as Cullen tries to apologize for not having any kind of civilized seating arrangement, “is to rid yourself of these notions of how different the Orlesians are from you.”

“But they are,” Cullen says, and she leans forward. “It’s the hardest thing,” she instructs him, “which is why I say it first. If you see them as human, as people like yourself…they’re less intimidating. Easier to communicate with. You know what it is like to be stranger in a foreign land, yes?”

“Kirkwall,” he answers immediately, remembering the stench of fish and piss and the clatter of hard accents.

She nods. “And eventually you learned the people, yes? How they walk, the idioms and mannerisms, the way they speak when they are sad or angry or overjoyed. Until you could be called a Marcher yourself.”

Cullen remembers sharing his templar cell with a Marcher, the same Marcher who called him _dog lord_. They’d gotten in a fist-fight that first night (Cullen was bigger but Samson a slyer fighter, and he can’t remember who won). He remembers sitting in their room alone after he’d been exiled from the Order. How empty it felt.

But Josephine goes on. “Well,” she corrects herself, “until you opened your mouth, or someone noticed how pale you are. But I digress.” She rests her head in a hand. “Like those two soldiers you made share a tent. Not so different.”

Cullen scratches the back of his neck and nods. “I’ll try,” he mutters, and that seems to satisfy.

“The second thing,” she says, “is that Orlesians love foreigners.” Cullen’s aware that his eyebrows nearly graze his hairline. “They love their culture,” she explains with a little shrug of their shoulders, “and they are fiercely proud of it. So they use it—to toy with you, to play upon your ignorance. It is their way of keeping the unworthy _out._ ”

“But.” She raises a hand when Cullen opens his mouth to protest. “It's complicated. There are mistakes they find intolerable and mistakes they find charming.”

“And you know them?” Cullen asks dully.

“Of course,” she answers. “I made them all myself, once.” She somehow makes standing up off that low stool a graceful thing, smoothing down her skirts. “Stand, please.”

He does so, and walks out from around his desk to meet her in the center of the room. “First impressions,” she begins. “Any Orlesian worth their salt will hope you greet them higher than their rank entails.”

“So… good mistake,” Cullen asks, “or bad mistake?”

“Bad mistake,” answers Josephine. “You cannot bow to a common lord like he is the empress of all Orlais.” She bows deeply at the waist.

Cullen mimics, and when he comes up, she has adjustments. _Not so deep, you’re not trying to lace your boots._ She corrects his arm with a quick touch— _you’re not saluting me, don’t salute_ anyone _but the Inquisitor._ They do three of them: the deep one from the waist meant for royalty, a shallower one from the chest for most nobles, and a slight incline of the head and shoulders for soldiers.

She makes him do it _twelve times._ Cullen is nearly lightheaded by the last bow, and finally the ambassador raises her eyebrow and nods. “We’ll practice,” she says, and before he can protest ( _practice? What is there to practice?_ ), she makes the gap between them a little smaller with a step.

“You may always bow,” she says, “unless someone offers you their hand. This will happen often, and perhaps more frequently to you than most. Please do me the pleasure.” She nods in a way that implies some kind of signal.

Cullen just stares at her. “Your hand, Commander,” she directs. “Offer it to me.” He balks, and the ambassador snaps her fingers and makes a _come now_ motion. “Today, if you would,” she says with all the dry amusement of the Hissing Wastes. Cullen ever-so-slowly raises his hand. He doesn’t quite know how to do such a thing.

And then the ambassador’s brown fingers are clasped around his gloved ones, and she looks like she is trying very hard not to laugh.

“Well done,” she says, and he cannot help but glower a little. It does not deter her in the slightest. She brushes a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Now,” she begins, in the spirit of education once more, “three ways to take a hand.” She bows her dark head and the knuckles of his fingers touch her forehead. Cullen blinks.

She raises her eyes to look at him. “It’s something old men and women do,” she tells him, “and you are neither.”

“Inform my knees of that, if you please,” says Cullen dryly, nodding his understanding. The edge of her mouth curves up a little. “This is standard,” she says, and after returning to the first position raises his hand and bows her head a little. “Respectful and chaste.”

“Chaste?” Now he cannot help the raise of his eyebrow. “Is there an…unchaste way?”

Josephine shrugs and returns them to her original position. “Many kiss the hand,” she says as she raises his fingers, but she only taps the tip of her nose against his knuckles. “Out of respect, or a desire to flirt, or profess affection, or all three.” She flips his hand over, exposing the palm of the glove. “Or they kiss here, which is, well. Decidedly unchaste.”

“An invitation to a broom closet,” Cullen supplies.

Josephine winces. “You will have to save that for the next Orlesian ball you attend,” she says. “The raise or the kiss is acceptable.”

Cullen knows his face has betrayed him from the way her eyes crinkle at the edges. “You do not have to kiss anyone’s hand, Commander,” she reassures, and there’s not a hint of mocking in her voice. “Only if you wish it so. The raise is proper enough.”

 

~~~

Dorian watches Cullen fumble a wooden chair out the door of the kitchens and stops him immediately. “Put that piece of filth back where it belongs,” he says, and drags him up to the library. They find what Dorian calls _a chair worth sitting in._

“It’s nice,” says Cullen. It’s a small chair, made of dark wood and comfortable rose-colored backing.

“It’s _rosewood,_ ” Dorian corrects, and he takes that as a sign of approval. They carry it between them up to the tower.

“There,” Dorian looks satisfied as they deposit it in the corner. “Finally, something dignified in this office.”

“You wound me,” says Cullen, though he does glance over the room once more. “My desk is dignified,” he adds.

“Perhaps if I wanted to sail to Par Vollen on it,” Dorian raises an eyebrow.

“Never underestimate utility,” returns the commander.

Every three nights, he moves the chair from the corner to in front of his desk. And every three nights, he learns.

 

~~~

“ _C’est un plaisir de vous rencontrer._ ”

“Set what?”

“One at a time. _C’est._ ”

“ _C’est._ ”

“ _C’est un._ "

“ _C’est un._ ”

“ _Plaisir._ ”

“ _Pla_ —” Cullen coughs.

The ambassador raises an eyebrow. ” _Plaisir._ ”

The word sounds like sneezing through his teeth. He attempts it again, and the ambassador corrects, and they fall into the rhythm so many times that she eventually sits back and rubs the bridge of her nose.

“Perhaps,” she says, “just _enchanté,_ for now.

“ _Oui,_ ” agrees Cullen, partly in apology.

“Ah, Commander,” she leans forward in her chair, voice wry. “You don’t even need me.”

 

~~~

 

The Inquisitor is fond of taking Cassandra on missions, which does something to chip away at Cullen’s worries, numerous as they are. But it also means they cannot spar, and as Cassandra comes at him across the yard with a snarl that could make a rage demon shiver back into the ground, he thinks _I have missed this_. Their swords sing when the metal meets between them.  

No matter how early in the morning they begin, they always seem to attract an audience. They began nearly the moment dawn broke, Cullen finding Cassandra at her usual place in the chapel. _The Seekers of Truth only whetted your taste for vigils, I see,_  he said, and her reply was a disgusted snort.

He woke that morning after only a few hours sleep, the lyrium snagging at the tendons of his legs. It always drags there worst, tugging him to sit, to collapse, to lay down and die. If he pushes himself hard enough, he can pretend it’s from the vigor of dueling the Hero of Orlais, not the weakness of his blood. Cassandra understands this, even though he has never asked her. It does not need to be spoken.

They fight unarmored—they overheat too quickly, even with Skyhold’s chill, and Cassandra once said something like, _well, if you truly fear a nick or two, Commander_ and that had settled it.

A few soldiers gather in little groups, a servant or two strays on their errand to sit on the steps, lean against crumbling walls, and watch. When they finish, Cassandra dabs at a shallow cut on her forearm and Cullen is sporting at least two bruised ribs, but the pain is the kind he likes, the kind he is made to bear. He runs a hand through his hair—it looks a-wreck from sweat and exertion, but he has time before the day begins to right himself again.

Their little audience begins to dissipate—Cassandra offers Cullen a waterskin, and he notices two figures on the steps as he tilts it back to drink. Leliana and the ambassador are deep in conversation, paused on the stone steps leading down to the courtyard. Josephine’s eyes are on him, but they flick back to the spymaster’s so quickly—perhaps he imagined it.

 

~~~

 

On an evening where if he bows once more, he’ll keel over like a tree, Cullen asks how many different kinds of hand raises exist in Orlesian culture. Once Josephine has launched into the meaning of number sixteen, he blurts out, “How do you know all this? How on earth do you remember?”

The ambassador sits back in her chair. “It’s my job,” she says. “How do you remember all…this?” She awkwardly jabs her arm back and forth in imitation of…a sword’s parry.

The realization startles Cullen into laughter; the ambassador just looks alarmed. “Your arm puts fear of the Maker in me,” he muses, and her eyes narrow.

“As does your pronunciation of _Montsimmard_.” She shakes her head.

 

~~~

 

At the end of her daily report, Cullen asks Manon if it’s true that Orlesians like foreigners.

“Eh,” she responds after a moment of thought. “Some of them they love like gods. Some of them they hunt for sport.” She shrugs. “Why, ser?”

“No reason,” he says, suddenly anxious.

~~~

 

“Commander.” Despite her best efforts, the ambassador cannot keep the exasperation out of her voice. “You are not even _trying._ ”

“I am,” he snaps, knuckles turning white as he grips the arm of his chair. A month of lessons, and here they are—again.

“Then tell me what is wrong.” They are staring at a wide piece of parchment, carefully drawn by Josephine herself. Names and sigils of the major houses of Orlais, their connections to one another, and key details are meticulously sketched. _A map for your battle,_ she had called it as she unrolled it over his desk with delicate fingertips. “Tell me what I can do.” She rubs the bridge of nose.

She looks so tired, and it is Cullen’s fault.

“This is useless,” he grits out, even though it is a lie. The headache behind his eyes rings so hard the words blur when he exhales. He cannot read them. That is why he cannot do this, but the thought of saying so never crosses his mind. It is weakness, shame, and he will not bear it.

Josephine freezes, her hand paused in the air on its way to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. The pause is too long before she speaks, before she remembers to put her hand down.

“Useless?” There is no anger in her voice, only confusion. And hurt. It lies underneath the syllables like gauze beneath a bandage. She straightens in her chair and clasps her hand in her lap, as though that will erase what she’s revealed.

He knows why—they have been in this moment before and righted it. With her, he is stuck in a never-ending cycle of blunders. Cullen feels all their work undoing, pebbles slipping away under his fingers. And it is his fault. He sparred again with Cassandra that morning—a marvelous moment where all he had to think about was the swing of his sword and the arc of his shield. Yet he will not deny that he has pushed himself too far, to run full day of training and meetings and no stops after dueling a Seeker for hours.

“Yes.” His own voice feels craggy as a mountain, sounds far away in his ears. “I will speak to none of these people. What would they want with me? What would I have to say to them? I will not.”

“You don’t know that.” It’s the fourth time she has said this since the evening began. “These three are military houses, they will have no reason to speak to Leliana or myself—” Cullen doesn’t even have to speak; she cuts herself off and stands.

“I will not waste my time speaking to stone,” Josephine says quietly, and if her voice was glass, he would have cut his finger on the edge. When she leaves, she pauses at the door, her hand rests on the latch long enough that Cullen thinks she is going to turn, to speak, to come back. His own tongue has gone still in his mouth.  

But her head only dips a little, the slope of her shoulders gone lax. A rock resolved to the wave. When she goes, Cullen cannot help but look at that spot a long while, wonder what she was going to say.

~~~

 

Three nights later, instead of lessons Cullen sits outside, surrounded by night and comrades. He clasps a mug of ale as a bonfire licks the walls of Skyhold with a red and orange glow. Something about having missed Satinalia, something to lift the spirit, to celebrate their victory at Adamant—the work of the Chargers, Cullen learns, after Krem broke a chair and decided to burn it outside. Now a fire roars, and Maryden is joined by a handful of players—two more lutes, and a soldier plays a flute bright as a summer’s day—and people are drinking, dancing, drinking. It’s a vaguely Fereldan tune and a vaguely Fereldan dance. Something about the way they turn in wheel formation reminds him of home, of summer festivals in Honnleath and his little sister’s laugh.

Trevelyan had lured him out, Arram peeking over her shoulder as she leaned into his office. “Just a moment,” she’d offered. “Get some air. Then come back and hide, if you must.”

Now he sits on a crate, holding a cup of ale from Varric, who prods him with conversation every so often. Cullen does not mind crowds (little spaces, though—there’s a reason his office has three exits), and just being in the warm shadow of the fire, unnoticed under the music and the movement…it has its own kind of peace.

He notices his colleagues a handful of feet away—Leliana and the Inquisitor are laughing about something, and the ambassador is filling Vivienne’s cup with some wine with a little smile on her face—Vivienne is so deep in conversation with Arram she does not notice.

Varric says something about the siblings Hawke, which distracts Cullen, and before he knows it they’ve been talking Kirkwall for the better part of an hour. They are deep into their third cups and deeper into an argument about whether ale from Ferelden or Kirkwall tastes more like “complete shit” when the flute trills.  Something much more lively starts up, and somewhere across the circle he faintly hears Dorian go, “oh, oh, the _capatio_. Maryden, you minx.”

Krem pulls Scout Harding into the circle, and more couples wander in, though Cullen thinks they are drawn to the tempo rather than the knowledge of the dance. Is that _Manon?_ Is that _Sera?_ Are they _holding hands?_ Dorian says something that he doesn’t catch, and then he hears Leliana say a little loudly, “Josephine can accommodate you, Dorian.”

He turns his head to see the ambassador grab Leliana’s arm. “No, no,” she protests, “stop talking, stop talking.” Dorian appears near them so quickly Cullen wonders, idly, if magic is involved.

“You know it!” Dorian looks like a child on his nameday.

“She does,” says Leliana.

“I do not,” Josephine maintains, arms firmly placed behind her back.

“You do,” says Leliana, undeterred. “You taught me.”

Trevelyan clasps her hands together, leaning into Arram’s shoulder. “Oh, please, Josephine,” she says. “Someone who won’t step on your feet, for once!”

“Would you deny me a little memory of home, my lady?” Dorian pleads, outstretching a hand. The ambassador gives a long suffering sigh and takes it, allowing herself to be pulled into the circle.

The tune starts in earnest now and the dancing is wild, enabled by the easy flow of wine and ale. No one seems to be following any particular pattern—Krem makes an attempt, lifting Harding so she stands on his boots and dashing about with her in tow. Her peals of laughter are only interrupted when Manon and Sera crash into them, Sera twirling Manon into their path on purpose not once but _twice,_ until it becomes a game of _last dancer standing._ Other couples dance with less violence but just as much energy. And then there is Dorian and the ambassador.

They obviously have intimate knowledge of how this is done—Cullen does not know what capatio means (he will have to ask Dorian later), but perhaps it means to revolve, for the two of them circle each other like winds from opposite sides of the world. Each step is practiced, precise—Cullen can admire that, surely—and Dorian turns and turns Josephine, and she _whirls,_ a loom spinning dark thread into gold.

He hears the Inquisitor ask something of the spymaster, though he can’t hear what. A soft chuckle from Leliana. She says, “It was another life altogether, when we met. One must always prepare art for the Game, be it lute, or voice, or flute, or feet.”  The fondness in her voice is soft. “And Josephine is _very good_.”

Dorian lifts her in a brief twirl. When the ambassador lands, the mage reaches for her hand but she spins in quick pivots about the fire, always just out of reach, and Dorian _leaps_ after her. This is part of the dance, too.

“Could we do that?” This time he hears the Inquisitor. The response from her templar is a snort. “If you want,” Arram says, “but I can toss you in the air without the frippery. I need my toes.” The ale, Cullen decides, is why he feels only a faint ache at this. He has little time to ponder on it, such is his focus.

Dorian catches Josephine by the hand, an arm about her waist—really, thinks Cullen with all the logic he can apply, the spinner must _let_ herself be caught—and then they whirl together as one. The music crescendos, and just as they finish their orbit about the fire, the ambassador escapes, pirouetting away in four quick revolutions. Just as the song ends on a triumphant note, she lands, feet in an elegant t, and gives a deep curtsy.

As after all the dances, there is a spattering of applause and hoots from all who’ve gathered. Dorian crosses to join her, and Cullen watches Josephine half collapse in laughter, flushed and loose limbed and brushing strands of black hair out of her eyes. Cullen cannot remember the last time he saw someone radiate such simple joy. Or perhaps—her smile is wonderfully untired.  

“Curly. _Curly,_ ” the raspy voice beside him finally makes him turn his head. Varric is pouring more ale into his mug, unable to mask his sniggering. “You need more of this,” the dwarf says sagely, “I’ve been calling your name for a minute straight.”

 

~~~

Three days pass. One of Cullen’s scouts hands him a missive at the tail end of a war table meeting. He has a lead on another line of red lyrium trading in the Emerald Graves, hopefully something that will lead precisely to where in the Emprise they need to go, or raze, or set aflame. Whatever it takes. They are so close to finding a name.

He unrolls it, reads. Finds himself reading it over and over, until Leliana says, “Commander?” Her soft voice brings him out of the deep. His mouth has gone dry, but he raises his head. “A report from our templar captives,” he says, relieved at the steadiness of his own voice.  

Trevelyan makes a noise of interest. “What does it say?”

The space between her words and his seems to stretch on forever, but he finally says, “One of Samson’s head lieutenants will make an appearance in the Graves in three days time. His name is Carroll.” He looks up at her. “Do you think you might catch him?”

Her eyes harden and she crosses her arms. “Yes,” the Inquisitor says, “Leave it to me.”

He takes a pin with a ruby-colored head and sticks it in the map, handing the missive across the table. The Inquisitor concludes the meeting and is the first to trot towards the door.

“Inquisitor,” he says, and he does not imagine the stillness of the room at his words. “For my sake, make it quick.” She inclines her head, and Cullen looks down at the map. “I knew him once, a long time ago.”

She nods and turns. He leaves the room at her heels.

 

~~~

 

That night, he sits at his desk, staring at the empty chair in the corner. It is a night for a lesson, by his counting. He should rise, find her, apologize. He remembers his own words: _I mean to make_ _amends_. And he would, were it not for Carroll. Every time he braces himself to stand, another thought intrudes, unbidden, unwanted.

It is easy to imagine the hulking red lyrium abomination he must be by now. It is easy to remember the quick-witted and slim-shouldered man, thick hair the color of almonds, a Chantry orphan. It is an impossible thing to make something new out of the two. Perhaps he should find Cassandra—she will understand this wretchedness, and perhaps she will have an idea of how to begin forgiveness—perhaps he still has a chance—he must try, no matter how hopeless—and there is a knock at the door.

“Come in,” he says, and the door opens, and a dark head peers around it.

He stands up so quickly his chair falls back—he catches it at the last moment. The ambassador comes in, closes the door behind her.

“I did not think you would come,” he breathes.

“One of us must defy expectation.” Josephine smoothes her skirts. The back of his neck flushes red and hot, and he rights his chair. He goes to the corner, lifting her chair and setting it in its usual place before (it must be said) retreating back behind his desk.

She sits. He sits. There is quiet. She looks at her hands, and Cullen looks at her.

“I should never have said that,” he begins. “It was—a trying day, and I could not—” He pauses, swallows. “It was unworthy of you, and what you do. I am sorry.”

There is silence, and Cullen rushes to fill it. “If you no longer wish for this,” he says, “I understand. But know that—I am grateful to you. To your expertise. To your patience—patience that I lack.” He runs a hand over his face, and finally says what he wants to say. “Patience I do not deserve. And you—you do not deserve _this._ ”

This time, the silence is softer. “No,” she says, “I will remain.” Her glance sticks him like a dart. “I do not give up so easily, Commander.”

Relief. He straightens in his chair. “I meant it,” he promises, “when I said I would make amends.” He says it like a vow. It is one he intends to keep.

“I know,” she answers unexpectedly, looking him in the eye. “I…I think we are learning how.”

“Painfully.” Cullen says it on a sigh.

“In the Anderfels, they say _life is pain._ We are learning in the spirit of an old tradition.”

“And what have you learned?” he asks before he can stop himself, and then almost winces in anticipation of the blow. _That you are a brute, a coward, and a fool,_ his mind supplies.

“I think,” Josephine answers, her eyes flicking down towards her hands, “that you would rather die than say _stop_.”

Oh, it is a knife. One that twists in his gut. And it is her turn to fill the silence. “I cannot make you trust me,” she looks at him with all the seriousness of the world, “but if you say enough, it is enough. And it stays with me.”

He does not know what to make of that. He does not know what to say.

She reaches for two wooden cups that have long laid untouched on his desk—she wipes the dust off with her fingers, and sets one in front of each of them. There is a wine jug he has not used in some time—she uncorks and pours before taking her cup in hand.

He stares down into the deep red depths of his own wine, confused. This is not their lessons. The ambassador tilts her head. “In my experience, all creatures and cultures drink to the fallen.” She gently pushes his cup forward until it touches the tips of his fingers. “To your friend,” she says.

“He is a Red Templar.” That is his voice speaking, dull and low. “He would kill me where I stand.”

“Can we never mourn our enemies?” Her voice is just as low, but warm. “Is life not life?”

Cullen’s fingers clench around the cup. “It is treachery,” he rasps.

She shakes her dark head. “It is human.” She raises her cup and waits the long while before he lifts his own.

They sip. The silence is not at all cold. Josephine examines the rim of her cup and murmurs, “My mother would be disappointed in me. No _cibo vivente_.”

Cullen raises his head, curious despite himself. “It means—well, many things. Food for the living. To make you remember the tastes of life in the face of grief. Antivan tradition.”

“This is enough,” he says, finally.

The ambassador smiles a little. “It is a start,” she agrees.

They drink again, enough that he refills his own cup and the ambassador’s. When the long silence stretches so far he can barely breathe, Cullen finally says, “We were knighted together.”

Josephine pauses, her elbow resting on the arm of her chair.

“They saw in us,” Cullen continues, letting it escape—a fish hook sliding out of his skin, “the makings of the future, of the continuation of the order. And now he slaughters innocents.” _And here I sit._

“That is not your fault.” Her brow furrows.

“It must be _someone’s_.” His voice is sharper than he would like. “He puts a templar’s sword to the neck of our people. We were brothers in arms—we must be accountable to one another.” He does not know what happened to Carroll after he left Kinloch Hold. It seems so long ago, yet not at all.

“They made a choice, I think,” is her reply. She rests her chin in her hand, looking thoughtful.

“A plant needs a seed. A weed needs a watcher." He hates how he sounds like a Chantry initiate.

“Will you find any excuse,” Josephine wonders aloud, “to carry the entire world on your back?”

Cullen rubs his forehead. “Would you find any excuse to forgive them?”

“Ah.” She sounds, of all things, curious. “You think understanding and forgiveness are the same thing.”

“It is simply—such a waste.” And it is. “Of men and women’s lives. They could be here, with me, with us, and yet they bend the knee to evil, just as they did the Chantry.” He looks down into his cup. “A leash for a leash.”

“Did you bid them to join Corypheus?” Josephine remarks, an eyebrow raised. “Did Leliana and I somehow miss that?”

“No.” It is a truth.

“Did you tell them to betray their Order and make battlefields of the Graves and the Plains and the Hinterlands?” Her voice is quieter now.

“I did not,” Cullen answers. “But I left them.”

And there it is. She sits forward in her chair. “You made a choice,” she says, touching the desk. “You made a choice for _you_ and no one else.”

“I could have—“

“And now you are not _one of them_.” It is the closest thing to an exclamation he has heard from her. “You are free.” She rubs the bridge of her nose. “Do not yoke yourself to their fate because you stopped taking it and broke your chains.”

The world fractures. Cullen stares at her. She realizes what she has said, and that she did not mean to phrase it so—he can see it in the shift of her eyes. She quickly sits up, puts her cup on the desk.

“Commander,” she attempts.

“You know,” he finishes.

And she looks down at her hands, and nods.

Skyhold could crumble under their feet and he would not notice. The silence hangs, full of dread, and she makes no attempt to speak. Cullen opens his mouth and finds words have failed him. He tries again. “How?” It comes out dry and broken.

“You left your box out, once.” He has a vague memory of them in his office snarling at one another months ago, throwing it into a drawer, accusing the ambassador of _playing house_ with Inquisition lives. Another failing to tally.

Her voice is quiet, unaccusing. “Your hands shake. I did not—I did not put it together until I had to speak to Lysette about supply lines.” Weeks before Adamant, then. _Maker’s breath._

Cullen’s mouth fills with questions, but he can only sit, hollowed out. “Have you…” he starts, and she shakes her head.

“No one.” She looks down at her hands again. “No one knows.”

“You should have told _me._ ” His voice rises, strong as a shield arm. Every interaction they’ve had streams back at him and he is besieged by the current. Every blade-tipped word he’s said, every sound of disgust, every wry retort, every snarl of _uselessness_ and  _time wasted_ , every misplaced sentiment, every argument, every curse, every breath, every stare, every battle on the long field of their discontentment for one another blazes in his brain.

She has never used it as a weapon. She has never waited for the moment to end him, to end this. Used the knowledge like an executioner’s axe, whether to end an argument or to make his weakness plain to their colleagues. Cullen teaches his soldiers how to find a single point of weakness, how to exploit such a thing, how to drive them headlong into their own failings as a fighter. Perhaps you wait, but never too long. _Time_ is something the Inquisition does not have, and your foe will never wait.

What a thought to have, at the end of the world:   _you have never been my enemy._

“You are not wrong,” says Josephine. There is the slightest tremor in her voice. “I simply—” She takes a deep breath, though every line of her form retains its tension. “I feared you would look at me the way you look at me now.”

Cullen tilts his head in question. She huffs a shaky breath, almost like a laugh. “I feared your hatred. You would see it as conniving, or betrayal, and it was already difficult, and—it was not my secret to speak.” Her fingers clasp together. “I—thought of it. But I could not see how to make it plain I knew without hurting you.”

She finally looks up at him. “It seems I must ask for your forgiveness, this time.”

“I do not.” His voice is ragged but swift, so quick that it can only be the truth.  Josephine looks at him, lost, and he says, “I do not bear you any hatred.”

That is what is most surprising. He expected it, but it is not there. Anxiety twinned with some kind of raw release, yes, an unpleasant and rising blend of emotion—but. Something cooler, solid, stronger takes its place. He cannot articulate why, or how. But not hate.

“I bear you nothing like it,” he murmurs, voice low.

They look at each other until she must look away. He sees the relief in the slope of her shoulders. To know he has caused this too makes him ache, somewhere below the hollowness.

When she takes her leave, Cullen walks her to do the door. She tries to apologize again, but he does not let her. She does not need to. He bids her goodnight, instead, and that he will see her in three days time.  

~~~

 

The advisors are at the war table, adjusting pieces as necessary—Cullen has sent another wave of reinforcements to Rylen in the Western Approach—when the scout comes in with a sheaf of letters. Most are for the ambassador, the rest are for the spymaster, and one is for him.

A brief update from the Inquisitor.

Cullen pulls the red pin out of the map, finishes his adjustments, and leaves the war room.

He goes down to the camps, lines up his soldiers and trains them for hours—shield walls, special tactics, hand-to-hand combat. With every swing of the sword, with every shout of his voice, he thinks: I will do better, I will make you better.

 _I do not need rest._ The shriek of his sword as it meets Manon’s in demonstration.

 _I do not need water, or food, or succor._ The thump of his palm as he slaps it against a shoulder adjusting a soldier’s stance. He wields gentleness when necessary, firmness when it is called for.

 _I do not need lyrium._ He breaks a shield, not wholly on accident. They must know what can happen.

 _Better._ The thrum of his heart. _Better._ The blood in his veins. _Better._ The sweat and the aches are not penance, but it is a start.

 

~~~

He hikes back up to Skyhold long after night has fallen, covered in sweat, every inch of his body singing with exertion. It was enough to forget, just for awhile.

The first thing he notices after he unlocks his office is the candle on his desk. It is the only light besides the moon—a soft, golden glow from a long pillar of red wax. Perhaps an aide left it burning.

He trudges over to put it out, and then he notices. A small basket woven from reeds, lined with a piece of linen. And in it: two slices of the sour brown bread present at every meal. Olives, ripe and wet. Dandelion greens. And in the center, a soft pile of wrinkled dates.

All the tastes, carefully arranged. Cullen collapses into his chair. _Where did you find dates?_ he asks the candle in wonder. He holds one carefully between his fingers.

A faint voice lingers at the back of his mind. _You do not need it,_ it says. _You are better._

Cullen bites into the softness of the dried fruit, savoring it on his tongue. He closes his eyes, lets the sweetness take the taste of death from his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your feedback! It's a gift.  
> tumblr: klickitats


	8. mend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josephine finds herself in the unfamiliar position of needing a little education herself.
> 
> Many thanks go to ever-incredible beta sunspeared.

_Who is this Commander Cullen?_

It’s the last bit of Laurien’s long letter. Her brother’s handwriting rushes across the page in a sprint, twice as hurried as usual. The ink covers the entire parchment in messy curls, no space unused.

They have lost their only investor. Only Laurien could make a page _seethe._ It’s all carelessness, of course—not on the part of her brothers, but on the part of fate. Carelessness and simplicity. The investor grows his grapes in both Antiva and Orlais, and lost almost the entirety of his Orlesian farm due to an unchecked rift. The way rage demons crack and tear apart the ground is most unfortunate. Cuts must be made.

 _Why does this keep happening?_ She can see Laurien at his desk, head in his hands. _What have we not given? What have I not done? Antoine works dawn to dusk at the docks—alone. Velia has not seen him awake in an entire week. I cannot remember the last time I slept more than a handful of hours myself. I do not mean to burden you, Josie—you, who are saving_ all Thedas _—but I know you will understand. I cannot watch_ (there is a thick stain of ink here from a quill tip’s break, Josephine sees) _my brother work himself into the grave. Perhaps dreams are something you let go at the end of the world. Let the wind take them._

 _You would do this better, find a way. That’s your magic. I’m just the king of the pile of rejections from creditors, of regrets from nobility near and far._  

Josephine leans back in her chair, rubbing the bridge of her nose. The misery of his words claws something deep within her. There’s no word for this, for the taste of someone’s despair. She will write later, _your letters are beautiful_ , and mean it. There is no one better suited for the task than he.

But she knows what his words say, though it isn’t plainly written in the text: help.

And she must. There _must_ be time enough in the day to add this to the never-ending tally of tasks. It is not a question of should or shouldn’t—only what she must do, only what will be. Josephine refuses to negotiate priority when it comes to her family, her duty, her position with the Inquisition. It somehow must all fall in line, in perfect balance.

She remembers, clear as anything: a warm morning in the Antivan marketplace, holding her mother’s hand as they winded through the crowd. As her mother chatted with the bread maker, a flash of light caught her eye, and she wandered a few steps away.

A man—a mage or a trickster—juggled hot coals in his bare hands, little glowing meteors in constant revolution. She stared, mesmerized by the spin and the ease of each movement. Then he’d caught them all, each black stone red with a murmur of heat. And the crowd took iron tongs, poking them into a nearby brazier and dropping new ones into his palms. They piled high, smoking, and he’d danced and sung, a smile blazing on his face.

A little boy pressed the tongs into Josephine’s hands, and she’d shoved them back with a gasp.

 _No, no_ , _no,_ she said. _I’ll hurt you._

The trickster laughed, a heavy, full sound from the belly. The coals smoked in his hands.  _Little girl,_ he howled, _what’s another?_

 She had nightmares for months. Smoke, the smell of fire and flesh, his laugh—wheezy as a bellows, cold as iron. Josephine would wake covered in sweat, unable to breathe until she submerged her hands in the nearest water basin. Eventually, the dreams faded. That day faded too, perhaps forgotten.

And then, during her first year as ambassador, her first year as her family’s seneschal, the first year of _everything,_ an aide asked Josephine if she could schedule a third meeting with Duke DeMallon, and she replied, not even looking up from scribbling the letter she was working on, “Ah, what’s another?”

Slowly, slowly—she never figured out when—it had become part of her. A chant thrumming in her brain, whispering along her fingers as she wrote. What’s another, and another, and another.

There is a space between the paragraphs on the parchment. A pause for breath, really. In speech, Laurien goes on for _days_ and then has to double over and catch his breath. She can imagine his sigh, the way he shakes his hand from writer’s cramp, and puts quill back to paper. His question is a (futile) attempt to distract the both of them. 

_Who is this Commander Cullen?_

_You never speak of anyone with such terrible annoyance. You seem well and truly convinced that he finds you a foe. Truly, though—he sounds a terror, but most Fereldans I’ve met are. All teeth. And I—well. I cannot imagine someone speaking to you in such a way—not someone who marks themselves your ally. Is there no finding an accord? Civility, at least, if not peace?_

Josephine folds up the letter carefully before locking it in her desk drawer. Calla pokes her head in, lets her know that Dorian and the Inquisitor are on their way for the evening meeting. Very good. Quite a discovery, that Dorian. To her relief, he takes the lessons to heart both with a levity of spirit and an attitude of utter seriousness. It is a complicated business, dancing. Dorian respects it in the same way she does.

She has them practice together—Trevelyan should practice with those she hasn’t danced with before. They’re learning a proper Orlesian dance now,the _roue de soleil_. No more step-step-step-turn. This is something any true Orlesian noble would approve of.

Pity it’s not passable yet. Josephine has them pause during the more complicated parts, go movement by movement. She demonstrates a turn with Dorian three times before Trevelyan musters up the courage to try, and then the result is…well.

“I will break someone’s feet,” the Inquisitor groans, sitting down on a bench.

“There, there,” says Dorian. “Perhaps a toe or two, but what’s a ball without a little blood?”

“If you can kill one of those despair demons,” Josephine reassures, “the ones that fly about all over the field—you can dance with an Orlesian noble. I promise you.”

“My feet don’t _do_ that,” the Inquisitor protests. “They don’t want to move that way. Yours are perfect.”

“They aren’t.” Josephine sits on the other side of her, pats her leg. “I just have more practice.”

“How much more?” inquires Dorian, an eyebrow raised.

She shrugs. “My mother started teaching me when I was ten,” she admits. “I begged her to do it.”

Warm sunlight on the floorboards. Her mother spinning her round, and round, and round. _Ah, my little Josie, with feet like the wind._ The joint pains had started only two years later, and then, like most things, Josephine taught herself. But that bears little mention now.

The Inquisitor gives a dramatic, hopeless sigh and puts her head in her hands. “Again,” Josephine says, standing and smoothing her deep blue skirts. “Come, my lady, think of how far you’ve come. This is nothing compared to walking in the Fade.” She takes her hands and pulls a grumbly Trevelyan to her feet.

It ends up being another hour, and after the Inquisitor pads off to bed, Josephine ends up plying Dorian with a bitter red wine so she can interrogate him about Tevinter politics for possible negotiations with Nevarra. That takes two hours, and then there are six letters for Orlais, four for Antiva, and one for Rivain, and quite a bit of thinking to do. The night is quiet with the kind of calm that settles in her chest, keeps her steady, bids her fingers to dip the quill in ink once more.

In those tiny hours of the morning, she puts weary pen to clean parchment. She only tells Laurien _he does not hate me as I thought. We have achieved a peace of some kind, though like all things between us, it is precarious._ She could concede to let herself to ponder it more—to take a breath herself, to wonder what that might look like. But those are coals for another day, another life. And then, she promises, _Laurien—I will fix it. You are not alone._

When Calla opens the door to her office before the dawn, she finds Josephine at her desk, still writing.

~~~

Josephine summons two agents—a hooded Ander boy with a bad habit of picking his teeth with the tip of his little onyx poniard, and a Marcher woman three hands taller than he, a heavy shield strapped to her back. She gives them parchments lined with ink, full of favors and one well-negotiated deal that she’d been saving for a better moment—it cost them an acreage in the Green Dales. But what must be done must be done.

She presses gold into their palms and sends the two couriers to Val Royeaux.

~~~

That night, Josephine crosses the stone bridge to Cullen’s office one bell past dusk. The chill from the war table still nips at her heels; she thinks of Laurien’s letter and her nails bite into her palms.

Little touches of ink dot her fingers—she broke two quills today. Careless, _careless_ , a stupid waste.  

As she approaches, Josephine delicately threads her fingertips through her hair, righting wavy strands of black behind her ears.  Before she can raise her hand to knock upon the door, it opens—an aide exits, stopping himself just before running headlong into her.

“My lady,” he says with a quick bow. “Commander Cullen is on his way back up from the camps—he sends his apologies, but he will be a little late. I can assure you that it won’t be long.”

“Of course,” Josephine replies. “Thank you.”

She steps into his office, the aide closes the door behind her, and then she is both alone and annoyed. A terrifying combination.

Of course, it’s fine. There is no harm in waiting for him. But Josephine bristles with impatience, shifting her weight from foot to foot. There are, off the top of her head, fourteen other things she could be doing, all of which involve the Inquisition, and nine more which center on her family alone.

So it only takes a moment before she’s slinking toward his desk with careful steps. The aide has left a tray: brown bread, chicken, and three ripe plums. A tall stone mug sits, steaming—upon examination, Josephine discovers it is tea, black and Fereldan bitter.

Papers are stacked in messy, scattered piles on his desk, hills of parchment between towers of books, and she tilts her head to read the writing upside down. Supply line reports from mining in the oasis, darkspawn sightings at the Storm Coast, and missives from Knight-Captain Rylen in the west, lovingly peppered with swears and curses.

She wanders behind it—his chair is a wooden fright, terribly uncomfortable looking and off-kilter in the legs. One of the desk legs is propped up on a wooden wedge. Dust gathers at the bottom of his tall, narrow window. 

A winding crack bisects the wall, thin but long. She follows it with her fingers step by step along the stone. Gatsi has workers solely devoted to repairing these kinds of things, why haven’t they been here—and then by chance, she glances up.

There is a hole in the ceiling. When she takes a step back, she can see a sliver of white sky through the gap. Another one in the roof, then. A matching set. How very proper.

She hears the wind whistle outside before she _feels_ the cold draft slide down from upstairs and escape through the window. She shivers despite herself. _Why do you live like this?_ she accuses—a snap, rather than a thought. She has been in this office so many times, and that she’s only just noticed the way it’s falling apart… The word that comes to mind is _unacceptable_.

A pile of wood rots in the corner, strewn over a broken piece of furniture. All Cullen’s bookshelves bow in the center, weakly made and straining under the weight of many tomes. _Why?_ It’s not his fault (well, it is), and he is not even here to defend himself (well, he could be), but _why choose this?_

Her hackles raised, she paces back to the desk in two long strides. The draft has shifted a parchment or two. She means to leave—she will go to her office, send a message that they will just try again tomorrow—but a page labeled _important players_ and its small, cramped handwriting catches her eye.

She glances at the door, then back to the desk, then back to the door. She slides in, perches on the edge of his chair (it wobbles unless she places her feet just so), and lifts the sheaf of pages up to read.

_Lord Octavio Rende – b. 8:85 Blessed_

_Porte Verte, Mont-de-glace (mon deh GLASS)_

_Wheat, embrium, archers - Inq: 4 unit bows._

_J: “tough as leather. He will like you.” – try for one more unit_

 

_Duchess Lalasa Malvolian – b. 9:15 Dragon_

_Parathon, Val Colline (kohl-LEEN)_

_Iron workers, gold smiths, n/c_

_J – “Leave for Leliana, she’ll look to make you a husband.”_

 

_Lady Ralea DuSand, –  b. 8:99 Blessed & ½ Fereldan_

_Bal-del-Fol, Montsimmard (just say, “the Grey City”)_

_Owns Orlais’ largest obsidian mine. –_

_Mention Madame Vivienne, but not the Duke Ghislain_

_J: Approach re: Inq. “Tread lightly. Don’t smile.”_

And on and on. Pages of little notes. Josephine flips through them without hesitation.  Names, places, the key exports, and hallmarks of the region or the family, and other important minutiae. He has crossed out words that Josephine has expressly forbade him from attempting to pronounce in public, and frequently annotated her advice verbatim. The pages curl at the corner from use. From _review._  

_Baron Martine Ashille – b. 8:90 Blessed_

_La Doran, Val Chevin (SHE-vee)_

_1 unit axes, 2 chevaliers – possibility for increase_

_—-He visited Kirkwall once, 9:35 Dragon or so_

_—-There is an Eddard Ashille among the Grey Wardens,_

_a mage from M/Circle. Ask J if this is useful._

She sets the pages down on the desk, and leans back in the chair—she catches herself at the last moment when it rocks back on unsteady legs. Josephine stares at this ambitious, thorough pile of notes.

 _You are listening_ , she thinks, finally, somewhat amazed. She’s not naïve—this is not the type of thing most people are suited to, not unless they’re veterans of the Game. Trevelyan can barely remember anything (thus the year and a half of lessons as often as she can squeeze them in), and Josephine has thought them cut from the same cloth, and—well. It would not have surprised her if much of what she passes on falls on deaf ears. They are busy people who have capacity of memory, but no time. It’s not an insult, just—reality. That’s why they have her.

 _You listen to me._ The surprise of it cuts through the thick haze of frustration shrouding her day. Just for a moment. 

She turns the pages, continuing to scan. She tells herself she is looking for mistakes, not snooping. (There’s Laurien’s voice at the back of her head: _if you weren’t so interested in other people’s business, Josie, perhaps your nose might not have grown so big._ )

On the back of the last page, she notices an entry, the last one after _Vicomte Raoul DeMouvier._ She squints, lowers her head a little to read:  

_Lady Josephine Montilyet – b. 9:13 Dragon_

_Antiva City, Antiva & presently of the Inq._

_Wine, ships, ambassadors_

_Our admiral for the evening._

Josephine blinks, stares at the text until she hears someone fumbling at the latch. She hurriedly scoops the papers back in order and hopefully in the right place before leaping back to the center of the room. The second she’s in place the door creaks, swings open, and the commander stands at the threshold. He is out of breath—his armored shoulders rise and fall in rhythm, and his golden hair is irrevocably mussed. He holds a helm in his hand, the maw of a lion.

“I’m sorry,” he manages, running a gloved hand through his hair to flatten it. It’s a futile exercise, and makes it curl all the worse. He gives up, shuts the door behind him. “I didn’t want to make you wait.”

“Your aide told me,” Josephine informs him. “It’s quite alright.”

“Still,” says Cullen, “I didn’t expect it to take so long.” He strides to the corner to rack his helmet and picks up her chair (well, Josephine has come to think of it as _hers_ , at any rate), placing it in its usual spot in front of his desk. He pulls it out for her, just a bit, before going and sitting in his own off-balance and ill-made pile of splinters.

Josephine’s chair is sturdy, comfortable, perfect. The reminder of it makes her grind her back teeth. “Was there another, ah, scuffle?”

“Scuffle?” Cullen furrows his brow. “Oh, you mean—no. It was Dagna.” He takes a sip of the tea that was left for him. “I suppose just saying her name does explain the situation,” he comments wryly.

Josephine almost smiles. “It certainly paints a clearer picture. Did she make something for you?”

The commander nods. “For Rylen. It’s too hard for the keep to take down a dragon without losing entire units. Dagna had quite the…solution.” He coughs slightly, looks down into his cup. Oh. He is waiting for her to begin, not wanting to waste more of her time.

But Josephine can bear it awhile longer. “No story that features Dagna can be considered boring,” she prompts him, curious. 

“Well,” Cullen says, “in that case.” And he tells her how Dagna’s crafted a new type of arrowhead, designed to slide deep into a dragon’s skin and lance it with lightning or fire—not enough to bring it down, Cullen explains, but if shot by an entire unit or two, enough to make it irritated.

“Too annoyed to find you worthy prey,” she muses aloud.

“That is my hope,” Cullen says, “And Dagna gives wild ideas form and shape. Less soldiers hurt or killed, the keep is less likely to be razed to the ground. The arrows are harder to shoot—that’s what we were testing—but our archers seem up to the challenge, though it’s all risk—“

“What a lovely idea,” Josephine says without thinking.

The commander blinks. “You think so?”

“Yes,” she affirms, her hands folded in her lap. “Perhaps it will one day learn to simply _leave you be_ , and then you will no longer even need to waste the arrows.” Or the life of an ancient and mysterious beast, she thinks, but keeps to herself. 

“Dagna calls them _thornside arrows._ ”

“Appropriate,” Josephine says. “A friend of mine in Cumberland told me the Nevarrans have invented a new word for us. You’ll have to ask Cassandra to pronounce it for you, but it means _the gnawing pest of all Thedas._ ”

Cullen chuckles, a low, rusty sound that’s too soft to startle, and yet it does all the same. “A victory on par with closing the breach, I think.”

“Perhaps Trevelyan will have it inscribed on her throne,” Josephine muses, her chin in her hand. “A symbol of our neutrality at the end of days.” 

“A reassurance we are annoyances of equal opportunity,” he says, leaning forward in his chair. There is a pause, and then Cullen takes off his gloves.

“I have not eaten today,” he tells her in an apologetic tone, but then nudges the tray towards her. “I would imagine,” he continues, “you haven’t either. Please.”

Josephine blinks. “Oh,” she remembers to say, “I couldn’t.” She _has_ eaten today—at breakfast.

Cullen raises an eyebrow. “You could,” he reassures. He edges the tray towards her again. “Ah, s _il’vous plait_ , Ambassador.”

That surprises a laugh out of Josephine. “You’re very serious today,” she tells him, reaching for a piece of bread, “if you’re beseeching me in Orlesian.”

The corner of Cullen’s mouth quirks up as he raises his mug of tea. “Treasonously so,” he admits.

It isn’t much of a lesson. Cullen asks for a detail about one of the families Josephine talked about at their last encounter, and it ends up spiraling into stories about Josephine’s first years as the Antivan ambassador to Orlais.

“And then—she went into _labor._ ” Josephine rolls the pit of a plum between her fingers. The tray between them is nearly empty.

“No,” says Cullen, leaning forward just a little. “That is ridiculous.”

“But true.”

“ _No._ ”

“I was given the honorable duty,” Josephine says, “of holding the three cockatiels that were part of her _coiffure_ that morning.”

“But _why—_ ah. The latest fashion, I assume.”

“If I hadn’t burned the dress, I could show you the stains from their droppings.” Josephine wrinkles her nose at the memory. “It took four hours for a horse and cart to come and get her—four hours is a long time for three birds to sit idle on one Antivan.”

“Isn’t three a bit excessive?” asks Cullen, unable to hold back the way his lips are curving into a grin.  “Perhaps just one cockatiel, for a festive hunting party.”

He picks up the last plum and cuts it in half with a knife as he speaks. Josephine realizes she has never seen his hands before—they are always gloved. They are broad and pale as the rest of him, dotted with marks. A long scar splits his palm.

She notices this when he hands her the lion’s share of the fruit. “Ah, but the Empress was there,” she reminds him before taking a bite. She dabs at the juice at the corner of her lips with a finger. “One, and one’s cockatiels, must be at their best.”

“Incredible,” he says, and leans back in his chair. “Will she be present at the ball?”

“I will make sure you see her,” Josephine promises.

Their lesson ends not long after that—Manon appears to summon Cullen to the undercroft, and Josephine walks back to her office over the stone bailey.

Calla is putting another log on the fire; she turns to Josephine and asks, “Well? How was it?” And then she realizes they didn’t fight, not once, not at all. 

~~~

When Josephine visits for the next lesson, there are two mugs of tea waiting on Cullen’s desk. Neither notices until halfway through the lesson, when Cullen reaches by habit for a mug as they look over some blueprints of the Winter Palace from one of her contacts at court.

“I never ask for it,” Cullen admits, scratching the back of his neck. “It just—appears. I don’t know why.” He gestures to the second mug that sits on her side of the desk. “For you, I think.”

 _They care for you_ , Josephine thinks, but that doesn’t explain why Cullen’s scouts and aides have decided to mother her, either. She reaches for her own tea and takes a sip. It is lukewarm. Sweeter than expected. Someone has dropped a cube of sugar in it.

~~~

There is a reason Josephine is standing here in the yard with the commander, surrounded by soldiers and whirling swords. It is like standing in the eye of a hurricane. Josephine eyes the nearby recruits warily, prepared to dart out of the way if a shield goes astray; Cullen stands with his arms crossed, looking very much at home.

“Why am I here?” Josephine mutters, her hands clasped behind her back.

“It’s important,” Cullen answers, tone nearly cheerful. Josephine could kill him.

The reason begins with the four words Trevelyan said to them this morning at the war table: _fix the Warden problem._ Mutually needed and hated by all of Thedas because of Adamant, she had described it as needed the work of two careful hands—or perhaps, one hand and one voice. _You must find a way for them to be useful to us that rebuilds their strength_ , the Inquisitor had said, crossing her arms, _and find a way for them to rebuild their name at the same time. They cannot remain under our wings forever._ What is there to say but _yes?_

So Josephine sent a message requesting a meeting. No answer. She’d tried again, and days later, still no response. Not even a response to decline her invitation.

After she tried a third time, Cullen had said, _might I try?_ And now, only a day later, here she stands at his behest.

“They are late,” says Josephine. Her tone is more petulant than she means it to be.

Cullen nods. “It’s quite a hike,” he agrees. Then he makes a low noise of disapproval. “Recruit Rickon,” he demands, his voice not quite a bark, “that shield is your last defense before the void—treat it as such.”

From two rows back, she hears a _yes, ser!_ and blinks. “How did you see that?” she asks, squinting. She can make out the head and shoulders of the recruit, but most else is lost.

“Look lower,” Cullen says, pointing. Josephine cranes her neck. “I can see his feet.  He, ah—he hesitates on the ball of his foot.”

“Instead of stepping forward, or back?”

“Forward.” He steps forward a little himself in demonstration. “To absorb the blow. Everyone pulls away from the strike at first.”

“Mmm,” Josephine replies. “Instinct.”

“Of a sort,” Cullen says, “but then you lose control of the fight. You have to overcome this.” He taps his temple. He turns his head to shout a correction at another recruit who isn’t committing to the strike enough.

“Everyone comes in,” he continues, “thinking it’s about who has the stronger arm. I know I did. Who can throw around the bigger two-hander, who can swing the axe the fastest.”

“But really, it’s just footwork,” Josephine says. She understands that.

“Footwork,” Cullen agrees. “Footwork, and learning not to flinch. And—Maker. Excuse me,” he says, touching her arm as he passes into the spinning fray. She watches as he pauses two soldiers engaged in exercise.

“You can’t pull your strikes like that,” she hears him say, watches him adjust the grip of the sword in a recruit’s hand. “No demon will thank you for it.” He bids the two go again, and they only spar for two or three blows before Cullen stops them.

He takes a shield, and stands in front of the recruit with the shaky sword hand. “Go ahead.”

She hears the recruit’s squeak touch the heavens. “On _you,_ ser?!”

“With haste, if you would,” Cullen commands, and she wonders at his game. The recruit reaches out with his sword and barely taps Cullen’s armor and shield in poor imitation of their practice pattern.

Cullen grimaces, catches the sword in a gloved hand. “It would be poor armor, recruit, if it broke under a dull blade’s strike. _Again._ ”

The recruit does it, a little harder this time, and Cullen prompts again, and they fall into the pattern of _over and over_ until the recruit is slinging his sword at the commander as hard as he can. Cullen takes each blow, blocking with his shield, maneuvering in quick steps, until the recruit breaks out of the pattern all together. He half chases Cullen through the crowd, and they weave carefully around pairs of sparring soldiers.

A slow grin—a smirk, really—forms on his face as the recruit grows more confident, as it becomes more sport, less practice. There are moments when she is sure they’ll run into another pair, but Cullen doesn’t let it happen, whether it be with a careful feint to the side or a rush forward to push the recruit back with his shield. It is quick, it is perfect. Josephine cannot look away, mostly out of anxiety. Mostly.

Cullen finally stops their exercise with a block of his shield, and then she watches him smile.  “Good,” he says. “Very good.” He claps the soldier on the back. “Fine work."

When he turns to rejoin her in the center, she realizes she has been staring and looks down, smoothing her skirts. Standing here for so long has resulted in her being covered in a fine layer of dust.  

“My apologies,” he says, resuming his post beside her, arms crossed. She watches his eyes dart from one pair of feet to another. “What were we saying?”

“He’s not afraid to hit you,” Josephine remarks.

“No,” Cullen says. “And hopefully not his enemies, any longer.”

An aide appears—one of Cullen’s—and shakes her head as she makes her way into the center where they stand. Josephine knows what she’s going to say before she opens her mouth, but that doesn’t stop the hard pit that forms in her stomach.

“One of the captains invited the Wardens in on their field maneuvers this morning,” she informs them after a bow and a salute. “Apologies, ser, but they won’t make it up here for some time.”

Cullen makes a noise. “Have that captain report to me when his maneuvers are done, please.” His voice is dry and decidedly displeased. “That was not what I ordered him to do.”

Josephine cannot help it—she whirls on him. But she schools her voice, just in time. “What was the point of this?” Even she might wince at how tired her voice is, the result of another evening with no letters from the west and little sleep to be found. She gestures to the rotating circles of recruits around them, the flash of steel and the sound of metal.

He sighs. “The Wardens are salt-of-the-earth people. They aren’t trusting of—politicians.” He says the last word with a note of apology. Josephine’s eyes widen.

“So now I am a schemer, looking to profit off the Warden’s rise?” she asks him, knowing it is unfair.

To his credit, Cullen shakes his head. “They have a hard time trusting anyone,” he explains, turning to look at her. “Surely—after what they’ve been through, you can understand that?”

“Of course,” she says, nearly _snaps_ , and rubs the bridge of her nose. “I’m not looking to mislead them anymore than you are.”

“And that’s why you are here,” he says, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “I thought—if you are the ambassador in the chair, behind the desk, far up in Skyhold—it confirms their suspicions.  But—if you stand in the field, an ambassador among soldiers—well.” He rubs the back of his neck. Josephine stares at him. “First impressions,” he finally says. 

Oh. _Oh._ It makes sense, which is the worst part about it. It makes a stupid amount of sense. And it is her own lesson. A different kind of bow, perhaps, but introductions all the same.

“Forgive me,” he says, continuing in her silence, “it is never—I never want to waste your time, Ambassador.”

“You did not,” she says, and she sees his shoulders tighten in surprise. And that’s the rub of it. That is what she cannot swallow, cannot bear. It was a waste of an hour, but not a waste of her time. With her own words, too. First impressions. _You are listening._ And she does not—cannot—understand that now. There is no time for it.

But let it never be said that Josephine did not admit defeat with grace. “We shall find another time, I think.”

And then she excuses herself back to her office.

~~~

Josephine is not proud of how long it takes her to ask. 

She’s started a habit of waiting at the gate of Skyhold at the end of the day—there’s always messages or letters for her, but they’re never from Val Royeaux. She tosses and turns so much now that she doesn’t waste the time of going to bed most nights.  It seems little punishment for the enormity of her tasks, her day.

Calla brings her brandy one night when she’s up writing a letter, and Josephine gently dumps it in the fire after she’s left. No need to spurn her kindness, but Josephine cannot stop. In the morning, she presses a cold compress to her eyes to take away the dark circles. Calla will come in for their dawn meeting and know immediately that she did not sleep.

It is half out of guilt and half out of recklessness from staying up all night. At least, that is what she tells herself, not that her idle mind has rested upon what to do next for _three days._ She slips out of her office and across the bailey to Cullen’s stone tower.

When she knocks at the door, she does not expect it to open. But then the commander is standing there in the threshold, dressed and armored. His hair sticks up a little in the back, and his hazel eyes are half lidded with sleep. A wrinkle from the bedsheets on his cheek. “Good morning?” he asks, somewhere between a question, a greeting, and a yawn.

Josephine looks down at her hands for a moment and says, “I would like to try again. If we could. If you’d like.”

He blinks slowly once, twice, before he says, “Well, yes—of course I would.” His tone rises from morning haze to his usual professionalism. “Perhaps you can meet me at noon in the yard.” And then he smiles at her. It is  curiously unguarded and creases the scar on his lip. Another symptom of the early hour, perhaps. 

“What will we be practicing today?” she asks him, a hand on her hip.

“Something that kicks up dust,” Cullen says, and she cannot help but laugh.

~~~

They are blue and silver and splendid if you look closely enough, Josephine thinks, but for now the Grey Wardens are all broken edges and frayed claws and bite. They look at the two of them—and Josephine must acknowledge, specifically at _her_ —like wolves forced into a corner.

There is a tall elf with sharp, sharp blue eyes named Leif, a one-eyed woman with salt-and-pepper hair who goes by Lysandre, and a Kirkwallan surfacer dwarf with a cruel laugh who introduces himself as Bram. Lysandre sits in Josephine’s chair, her staff (a gnarled white branch with a scythe’s blade at the tip) leans against the wood. Leif hefts a greatsword on his back and stands with his feet slightly apart as though ready to dart back or forward. His eyes remind Josephine of the Champion of Kirkwall’s, but the coldness of them is like nothing she’s seen before. Bram leans on the other side of Josephine’s chair, picking at his nails with a rusty knife.

Josephine hopes it is rust. It probably isn’t.

When they’d finally come up through Skyhold’s gate and found Josephine and Cullen surrounded by soldiers exercising with pikes, she’d witnessed the briefest look of surprise on their faces. They are haggard, worn, even blank—but Josephine knows how to spot when a question changes in someone’s eyes. Instead of saying _who is she?_ after Cullen and Josephine wind their way through spear and blade to meet them, Leif greets Cullen with a clasped arm and says gruffly, “You must be her.” It is a little victory. Josephine will count it.

A pity it was so quickly lost. “I understand,” Josephine repeats herself, patient as the grave, “that we wait for Weisshaupt to appoint a new Warden-Commander for Orlais. But we do not have the time to spare.”

“Why don’t we?” says Bram slowly, darkly. “We make decisions by consensus. We’ve got people who can run the Joining. We’re making it alright. What’s _your_ hurry?”

“The Inquisition wants to rebuild the Warden name.” Cullen steps in. “Part of that is finding where you’re needed. But part of that is figuring out how to stand on your own.”

“The Wardens risk dying out,” Josephine says, “and you are too needed.”

It is the wrong choice of words—too callous after the events at Adamant, too raw against the despair of it all. Josephine closes her mouth, but it is too late. That is what begins it.

“Hear that, Bram?” says Leif, eyes narrowed and arms crossed. “The song remains the same.”

“I do not mean to offend,” Josephine begins, but the Wardens’ hackles are raised now. Tension lines their shoulders.

“It’s the same story,” mutters the dwarf, “live for Thedas, die for Thedas, a tool for those who sit in high stone towers and shine their shoes everyday.” Leif gives a laugh like a bark.

“If I might,” Cullen interrupts, unfolding a map. He has devised a plan for two squads of Wardens to accompany the Chargers on a sojourn to the Storm Coast to scout out the darkspawn infestation there. A task easily worthy of a Warden’s skill, he says, but something to ensure the warden’s numbers do not deplete. It does something to soothe the mood and excite it all at once. _They want to be back in the field,_ Josephine realizes.

“Good,” Leif says. “Real work. That’s what we should be doing.”

“Yes,” Josephine begins, “and perhaps think on someone who might be a voice for the Wardens.”

“Someone will be appointed from Weisshaupt,” Bram says curtly, “and I can tell you that nobody becomes a Warden hoping to make our tale more _digestible_ to those they serve."

“But you surely cannot see an end in this,” Josephine tries, gently. “How will you continue if Thedas cannot forgive you for Adamant?”

Cullen tries to say something (and what a strange, strange day it is, if he is playing peacemaker), but he is ignored by all parties.

“Perhaps you meant,” Bram mutters through gritted teeth, “the other way around.”

Josephine blinks. “Your brethren threw in with demons.”

“Do not speak of them,” the elf snarls, “do not speak of _it_ , as though you understand it, as though you know anything about the Wardens do. That is plain enough.”

“I know you are leaderless,” Josephine points out, feeling heat rise on the back of her neck, “penniless, without resources, without the trust of Orlais or your own kind, for that matter.” She smoothes her skirts. “And without a home. _Something_ must change if you want those things once more.”

“If your Inquisitor had not lost Stroud in the Fade,” snaps Leif, “we would have someone. If the Inquisition had not found our leadership _less important_ than the fabled Champion of Kirkwall.” He cuts himself off, eyes blazing. “But no. Now it is the Inquisition’s turn to tell the Wardens to fuck off and die somewhere else.” And he spits on the floor of Cullen’s office.

From behind her, she hears Cullen make a low, angry noise and take a step forward, but Lysandre snatches Leif by the forearm with a powerful movement. All goes still; she’s been silent till now.

“Forgive Leif, if you would,” she says, voice cool and heavy as an Ander mountain, “He forgets his Joining was only half a year ago. He _forgets_ we are here because of the Inquisitor’s generosity of spirit.”

At this, Bram snorts.  Leif retreats, folding his arms, still unsettled. There is a long quiet.

“Do you know what it is like,” Lysandre finally asks, looking at Josephine, “to hear your own blood telling you to die?”

There is a pause, but she does not let shame win the day, even though she feels its cold prickle down her spine. “I do not,” she admits. “I did not claim to know.

“But you claim to know what is best for us,” Lysandre says, standing. The other two adjust their postures—they are about to walk out the door, Josephine realizes, and it is her fault.

“You can heal the wounds you inflicted on Thedas,” says Cullen, voice stark, “by working with the Inquisition. But the ambassador is the one who will make Thedas recognize it as such. She will make Thedas hear you.”

“Good,” says Lysandre. “I look forward to when she learns how to form the words.” She jerks her head at Leif and Bram, and they leave without another word. The slam of Cullen’s door seems to echo inside Josephine’s very skull.

Cullen opens his mouth to say something after a handful of breaths. “Please don’t,” says Josephine, a hand raised. She turns on her heel to leave. “I will fix it. _I will fix it._ ”

“Wait,” says the commander. “Please.”

It makes her stop at the door, look over her shoulder at him.

“Wardens,” says Cullen, “do not _ask._ It is not in their nature. It is not—not what they are meant to do.” He shifts awkwardly from side to side, as though anticipating a blow, before continuing on. “I was a templar, Ambassador,” he begins, and his voice is quiet in the empty office. “I was a templar of the Chantry, and the Chantry asks for nothing. It demands, it decrees, it takes. It does not ask.” He rubs the back of his neck. “There is no room for negotiation. Make your demands steel, or watch what you need broken into pieces. Meredith once called it _the art of weakness._ ”

There is a silence between them, cold as ice, and then Cullen murmurs, “That is a falsehood. It is the excuse of the fist and the deafened ear. I promise you, I know that.”

He straightens, and their eyes lock. “But it is a hard habit to break. It goes against every instinct of survival for soldiers, for the Wardens especially. They live to do what is necessary to save Thedas _at all costs_ —to ask for anything is to trade honey for blood.”

It stings without hurting—that’s how she knows it is truth. Josephine opens her mouth, then closes it. “I have damaged this, today,” she murmurs. She presses a hand to her forehead. “I have not done my duty.” 

Cullen shakes his head. “It was not what they were ready to hear,” he offers instead. “It is not a language they know. We will find a way there.” He shrugs. “You made a mistake with them. It is not irreparable, not yet.”

It is not much for comfort. But Josephine merely nods her head, turns the metal latch.

“Ambassador,” he says, his voice low as she opens the door. “I have found—sometimes, I think, you are the only voice speaking in a world that is screaming.” He glances away. “They do not know the value of that now. But they—they will.” He is adjusting things on his desk with great focus. “I know.”

Then he knocks over an inkwell. Josephine takes that as her cue to leave

~~~

There is no word from Val Royeaux. Josephine burns her palm with sealing wax. How careless.

~~~

Two nights later, it’s a lesson. Josephine hauls a dirty wooden crate up from the bowels of Skyhold through the solarium and across the stone bailey to Cullen’s tower. She cannot knock, not really, so she kicks the door several times until he comes to open it for her. Then he follows her to his desk, where she sets down her burden with a jostle and a thunk. The box really is filthy—he pries off the lid. He pulls out a dusty, half-filled bottle of wine.

Cullen’s eyes narrow as he obviously struggles to find a way to say, _what on earth is this_ without offending her; to see a man such as he attempt to marshal his response will never fail to amuse.

“Ritewine,” says Josephine. She had gone to talk to Blackwall, and while he was frustratingly vague about Warden culture, this detail had emerged. “The Inquisitor keeps bringing it home. I should return it to them. And I found some vintages they may...appreciate. For those they currently keep.”

She watches Cullen consider this. The quiet is too much. “I mean to make amends,” she finally says.

It takes him a long moment to respond. “I cannot say how they will react. P But I will bring it down to them,” he finally offers. “It’s a step, at least.”

“I should do it,” says Josephine. “Or perhaps, you would consent to accompany me. I have never been down there.” She looks down at her hands, embarrassed. “And I should.”

Cullen nods. And then she asks, “Would you mind? I do not mean to add to your burdens.” She sighs. “But I should learn their world— _your_ world—better. My education of it is frail at best.”

He is staring at her, and she does not know what that means. “Of course,” he says softly. “I will make the time.”

“Thank you,” she says, and then moves them on to the evening’s lessons.

They are in the midst of practicing introductions—Josephine is in curtsey, Cullen half-bowed and raising her hand—when Calla opens the door without knocking.

“Apologies, milady,” she says, envelopes in hand. “Urgent for you.”

“Do you mind?” she asks Cullen, and he shakes his head. She takes the package from Calla, bidding her thanks as she exits. The commander hands her a letter opener.

She slices through the top, and the first sheaf she pulls out is familiar to her fingers. She hands the letter opener back to Cullen, unrolling the parchment.

The very air changes as she reads it. She doesn’t read so much as stare, and stare, and stare.

After a moment, Cullen says, “Ambassador?”

She doesn’t answer. The page she holds is the last page of her negotiated deal to reinstate her family’s trading business in Orlais. The page she holds is dirty, crumpled, and streaked down the center. Three long lines, fingers dipped in it like paint.

Cullen says _ambassador_ again, moves towards her but she holds out an arm. “Please,” she says, and he stops. Waits.

It is a warning. The couriers are dead, of that Josephine is certain.

“That is blood.” The commander is not asking a question. He is trying to keep the tightness out of his voice. She does not respond.

She pulls the next page out—it is a letter from Leliana. The spymaster is on a quick sojourn to Crestwood, but Josephine had asked her to see if she could shake anything out of Val Royeaux.

And there is the blow. A man will tell Josephine what she wants to know, but only if she brings the Inquisitor. Leliana’s letter is short, perfunctory.

“Ambassador,” Cullen murmurs, insistent.

Before he can say anything else, her voice, blank as it is, speaks: “Someone wants to hurt my family.” 

There is a breath of a pause before his response. “How?” he asks. He takes a step forward.

“It is my business.” Josephine’s tone is terse. This should never have happened. The woes of her family should _never_ have crossed into the Inquisition’s dealings. That is supposed to be her skill, no? Keeping the strings in line, never letting them cross or touch. But there they are, and here she is, parchment in hand, lost. 

The thought of it—of someone deliberately trying to harm her kin—is the closest to madness Josephine will ever know.

“You are standing in my office, holding a letter covered in blood,” Cullen grits out, “I fail to see how that is irrelevant to me _._ ”

“It is a _delicate matter_ ,” snaps Josephine, “and not for your hands.”

His eyes flash, then dim—she has hurt him, she realizes, underneath the shifting rise of acidic worry.  The envelope shifts in her hands and then there is a sound of a tear—a little onyx poniard slices through the parchment. On an inhale, Cullen ducks down and catches the handle in his fingers before it impales her foot. Or the floor. It was going to hit the floor.

He drops it on his desk—it sticks up, the handle waving back and forth. They both stare at it.

“Who is sending you daggers, Josephine?” he asks, his voice low, and rough, and—calm. Strangely under control. “Who wishes you harm?”

She does not think he has ever heard him speak her name before. That, more than anything else, draws her out of the fugue.

“I don’t know,” she answers, and it is true. She has a parchment covered in blood, a letter from Leliana telling her to take the Inquisitor and meet with a count in Val Royeaux, and a dagger stuck in Cullen’s desk. “My family has—a history. I was trying to restore trade routes in Val Royeaux.” She sets the letters down on his desk next to the dagger. She cannot bear to tell this twice.

“What do you need?” he asks quietly.

“The Inquisitor,” she tells him. She meets his gaze. "If you would."

He goes, leaving Josephine with alone with parchment and knife, and returns with Trevelyan in tow. Josephine leans against Cullen’s desk, her arms crossed, and tells them what they need to know—that her family has been in debt for over a hundred years, that she is in charge of her family’s dealings and estates, and that her enemies wish to leverage her ties to the Inquisition in their favor. Trevelyan sits in Josephine’s chair, Cullen stands at attention, and they both listen with grave intensity.

“You run your family’s estate?” asks Trevelyan. “Josephine, when do you sleep?”

Josephine brushes the comment away like a fly. “I do what is necessary,” she says, and wishes that didn’t sound so tired. “I will not see my family suffer.”

“But you’re not—destitute,” Cullen says, fingering his jaw. “You’re not—starving.”

“Of course not,” Josephine says, sharp as a knife, “I know the difference between _debt_ and _death_ , Commander.” She rubs her temples. “My brothers are killing themselves trying to rebuild our fleet. Every year we sell more land to keep creditors at bay. Soon we will have nothing left, and I would not see them suffer. Not for all the world.”

Trevelyan clears her throat. “And they want me, Josephine?”

She sighs. “It will be a boon to the comte, if you come with me.”

“It is no hardship. Can it wait until we are in Halamshiral?” The Inquisitor stands, brushing imaginary dust from her trousers. “We can stop on the way home.”

Josephine blinks. “Of course,” she says.

Trevelyan nods. “Then consider it done. We will find the root of this.” And then she leaves.

Josephine stares at the spot where the Inquisitor stood until she hears Cullen gently fold the letters. He hands them to her.

“It cannot be that easy,” she says.

“It’s Trevelyan. She is the Inquisition.” Cullen opens the door to the outside for her.

“These two things should not touch,” she says on a low sigh. The night is dark, the cold welcome and bracing. They walk across the stone bailey together.

“But they do,” Cullen says, finally, as they move through to the great hall. It is empty. “They touch in you. You lead your family, and you are at the heart of the Inquisition. Perhaps it was inevitable.”

But they are at the door to her office, and her hand is on the latch. She thinks of Trevelyan, how simple it was for her to say _yes, of course_ and what a mystery it all is.

“That is not good enough,” Josephine replies. “We are the Inquisition. We must be beyond reproach.”

“ _You_ are the Inquisition.” Cullen’s voice is low, but he looks at her so certainly, as though it is an absolute. The way his hand grips the pommel of his sword reminds her of a vow. “And there is very little, I think, that the Inquisition would not do for you.”

Josephine must look away after a handful of heartbeats, must turn the latch in the door and go inside, must find the will to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, off to the Winter Palace. Thank you for your wonderful, wonderful feedback.  
> tumblr: klickitats


	9. attention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen does more than just _endure_ the Winter Palace, much to his surprise. Part one of Halamshiral. 
> 
> Many, many thanks go to my most excellent beta, sunspeared.

The gates of the Winter Palace gleam black and silver, waiting to open like a mouth full of rotting teeth. Cullen admits this is dramatic, but he is Fereldan and this is just as terrible as he imagined. Beyond the gates he can hear the sounds of cooing voices wrapped in silk, laughing soft, reserved, fashionable laughter.

"Perhaps," suggests a wry voice, "you should take your hand from your sword. I don’t think we’re trying for murderous first impressions."

Cullen sighs deeply and loosens his grip, but doesn't remove his hand from the pommel. Dorian comes to stand in front of him, pats his arm. "Come now, be a good lad. Josephine sent me over to tell you."

Cullen places his hands behind his back instead, and Dorian makes an approving noise. "May I?" he asks, and Cullen nods before Dorian reaches up to adjust his collar. He glances over his shoulder to see Josephine in mirror, rebuttoning the sleeves of the Inquisitor's jacket with deft movements of her long fingers, rearranging the tassels, brushing little stray hairs behind the Inquisitor's ears. Her own gloves are tucked under her arm. Trevelyan looks pale and wan as cheap porcelain. He can't hear what Josephine is saying, only the low, lilting murmur of her voice below the night breeze.

"Do you remember what we talked about?" Dorian asks, interrupting his thoughts and brushing imaginary dust from Cullen’s shoulders.

Only too well. Cullen groans. "I am not here to have a good time," is his reply.

Dorian _tut-tuts_ and tugs Cullen's gloves up a bit. "Never saw I a man so wedded to misery," he says. "You look like Andraste at the stake."

"This is too tight," grumbles Cullen. "If I bow to take a hand to dance I will burst out of it."

"You're a tactician," Dorian reminds him, "so let's use that. When Trevelyan inevitably spills wine on a duke, or rifles around in the Empress' closet, or needs to kill someone, supply and initiate a diversion."

Cullen only makes what Manon calls his plea-to-the-Maker-for-strength-sigh and Dorian chuckles again. "Fine," he says, running fingertips along his mustache, ensuring the curl, "don't dance. But I hope you brought some more rocks to give away as tokens of admiration."

And with that he turns, leaving Cullen to choke and splutter.

Leliana speaks to Arram and Varric in low tones; Varric turns his head from the conversation and snorts, " _Breathe_ , Curly. And think about the cold, for Andraste’s sake. You need enough blood to run the rest of you." But the night air does only so much to cool the back of Cullen’s neck.

There is a signal from behind the gate he doesn't catch, and Josephine motions with her hand. "They are ready for us," she says. They coalesce together into a group, Arram and Cullen and Leliana at the back, Dorian and Varric near the front, and Josephine and the Inquisitor in the center. And the gate opens.

The gardens reveal themselves to be just as gaudy as Cullen suspected, but there he must admit the rows and rows of white cup lilies and the streaming fountain are a little lovely. And there is openness of the night sky stretching above them. It does a little to quell the knot in his stomach, the unease of being surrounded by so many masks. An idea that could have only come from the deepest pits of the void, he assumes, for only demons change their faces with such felicity and delight.

But he is trying not to be dramatic.

The entire gardens go hushed for half a moment when the Inquisition enters, before heads turn back again and the tittering resumes. Everyone constantly moves—men wave silver and gold fans, ladies' skirts whisper as they shift from foot to foot. The looks are slight and sideways, but Cullen _feels_ all of them. He can't imagine how Trevelyan stands it. His skin crawls, his hands ache to grip his sword in readiness, but he mustn’t, _he mustn’t._

Then the gate closes behind them, heavy as can be, latched and locked, and Cullen does not approve of that at all.

"Ass deep in Orlesians," mutters Varric.

"I can't do this," whispers Trevelyan.

Next to him, Arram makes a soothing sound. The murmur flickers in his heart, but it is only memory. He watches Josephine reach up and place her hand between Trevelyan’s shoulder blades.

"You can," Josephine murmurs. "It is life or death, but we are with you and you are not alone."  She leans close to her ear. "They are just people, Inquisitor. People who _need_ you. "

"What if I destroy an alliance between Rivain and Orlais, or swear in front of the Empress, or—"

"Then we will fix it." Josephine places her hands behind her back and takes a deep breath. "There is very little you can destroy that we cannot rebuild."

Cullen doubts that, and the sideways glance he shares with Leliana confirms it, but Trevelyan needs the lie. She exhales slowly, a moment of peace gathers between them all, a breath before the dive, and then they go further into the garden.

They disperse a little, and now Cullen must navigate this extremely strange dance. Who to talk to, whose side to stay at, where to go. There is a structure for the plan as plain as any siege, with waves and feints and necessary players making necessary movements. Josephine has instructed them all carefully, with timing being of the most importance.

The garden is the warm-up, the first stretch. Josephine and the Inquisitor find nobles Josephine knows and knows well, let Trevelyan make her first mistakes with friends and the forgiving, to prepare her for the long night ahead. Leliana, Arram and Dorian are their own unit for now, aimed at nobles with deep loyalty to the Chantry or clerics themselves. Proof of how the Inquisition provides a space for templar and mage to work in tandem as they were meant by the grace of the Maker. He hears Dorian's high, easy laugh across the garden—his usual response to an insulting barb. A wise choice to pair him with the temperate Arram.

Cullen stands with Varric at the fountain. He is supposed to observe and find his feet. There is a rare chance of that happening, he admits, though he appreciates the time to breathe it in.  "Do you ever look around," Varric muses, "and think, Maker's _balls,_ what am I doing here?"

"My whole life," Cullen admits.

Varric snorts. "Touche," he says. "It's prettier than Kirkwall, to be sure. But it smells the same."

"Like fish?" Cullen cocks his head.

"Lots of pretty things, built on top of shit." His voice rasps. "Lovely smiling faces that would drink their own mother’s blood if it meant a step up."

Cullen acquires a cup of wine from a passing servant and passes it to Varric, who laughs deep from the belly.

"It's not melancholy if it's true," he says, "and besides, watching them trip all over each other is the most fun I've had today. They’re like giant, gossiping butterflies." He drinks. “I’m used to being at a party just to make trouble, is all.”

Cullen takes a moment to survey the field again and finds himself agreeing—the deception of it all tinges the very air, like vinegar and embrium. “I don’t doubt that will happen,” he says, “by the time the night is over.”

They watch the aforesaid butterflies move about the garden in slow waves of silk. "It's hard to imagine Ruffles here," Varric says, swirling the wine in his cup, "isn't it?"

"Perhaps," Cullen responds, mulling it over. It is and it isn't. "It must be different, when it's a language you can speak. And obviously she was good at it." He searches for her and Trevelyan around the garden.

"Maybe," says Varric. "Nightingale, now, I can see. Cut throat, by any means necessary—it’s the sister all over. But Ruffles? Playing this kind of game? Maker.”

"What gives you that idea?" Cullen replies, perhaps a little irritably, but sometimes Varric takes a damnably long time to get to the point. "We need words and sharpened steel in equal measure, and Josephine is made of both." He gives Varric a sideways look. "She likes a challenge. Just because it's not Leliana's way..."

He stops himself because Varric is giving him a face-splitting grin. "...You are goading me," Cullen grumbles.

"Maybe," says Varric. "I can't help it. Everyone knows you two can barely breathe in the same space without shouting at one another.”

“Dramatic,” he responds dryly, “and untrue.”

Varric’s eyebrows waggle. “Oh yeah?” he asks, his voice attempting innocence.

“We frequently occupy the same space,” Cullen replies, crossing his arms, “with only civil discussion.”

“Ah. Frequently,” Varric mulls, “ _frequently._ Now that’s a word.”

A pause falls between them. Cullen looks at his feet, restrains himself from digging into the grass with the toe of his boot. “She gave me lessons,” he mutters, “for tonight.” He senses Varric is holding back a snort. “Trevelyan ordered it,” he qualifies quickly, unfairly, as though he might have just prepared himself otherwise. Which he wouldn’t have.

He lets himself wonder, just for a moment. What it would be like to stand here, on this field, at the center of this garden, with no idea what was going on. Surrounded by masks, no idea who anyone was, or what to say, or what to do. He suppresses a shudder.

“Shit,” Varric murmurs, a paragon of sympathy. “Must have been a torment.”

Cullen blinks. “A torment?”

“Well, yeah,” he replies. “You, learning court etiquette? All the bows and noble houses and hand waving and _socializing?_ ” Varric adjusts his jacket. “Sounds like the kind of thing you wouldn’t have the patience for, honestly. Must’ve been terrible.”

“No,” Cullen says. It’s a surprise to him, too, all of a sudden. “It wasn’t.”

“Huh,” is Varric’s response. Cullen turns his head, catches the wry smile at his lips, and he has the deeply suspicious feeling it was what Varric wanted him to say all along. It embarasses him, to know he might be admitting a piece of his thoughts without knowing it.

There’s no time to comment, however, because Cullen spots a nearby noble checking his timepiece. He looks familiar—Josephine spent a great deal of time talking with him about what the Orlesian military class would wear to an event like this, to make for easy spotting. The cerulean and grey he sports are of the DuHasettes of Val Firmin—this is probably someone he is supposed to take.

He stares at the duke, then looks around for Josephine. He isn’t sure why—she’s busy with the Inquisitor, and she doesn’t have time to guide him through this like a child. That was the point of the lessons.

But he looks for her anyway, and finds her and Trevelyan talking to a woman in an enormous cream-and-blue dress across the garden, not far from the fountain.  Trevelyan engages in deep conversation with her, and then Josephine meets his eyes over her shoulder.

She follows his gaze till it settles on the noble and gives a tiny nod. He hesitates—a moment of doubt, perhaps. He remembers the way she murmured to the Inquisitor, how _sure_ she sounded, even if it wasn’t true, even if there must be an alliance she can’t fix in this strange world of promises and favors and rule.

The tide of thoughts recedes when Josephine smiles at him, just the smallest curve of her lips, and tilts her head meaningfully. _Go._

 _Maker help me,_ Cullen prays, but it’s not the desperate plea it might have been. And he walks forward, motioning to Varric he’ll be back in a moment’s time.

 

~~~

 

The man in DuHasette colors ends up talking to someone else before Cullen can get to him, but an Orlesian with an enormous grey beard and eyes dark as coal blocks his path anyway. He’s a whole head taller than Cullen, a man built to swing a broadaxe, but he knows this is Lord Octavio Rende. He turns to Cullen with a face pockmarked and worn by years and years of sun. He remembers his notes: _wheat, embrium, archers. Tough as leather_. Lord Rende’s eyes search him, looking for cracks and faults, suspicious.

He  breathes, steadies his voice against his strained nerves. “I am Commander Cullen Rutherford of the Inquisition,” he says and bows, steady and precise. He has done it a hundred times before, after all. “ _Enchanté._ ”

“I know who you are.” Rende’s gruff voice carries a heavy hint of his Orlesian homeland. The look in his eyes changes—not quite approval, but Cullen will mark it a victory. “A pleasure,” Rende says as he bows in response.

“Are you, ah, having a pleasant evening?” Cullen places his hands behind his back.

Rende makes a disgusted noise and ignores all mention of the ball completely.  “You’re too young,” he says instead, scratching his beard, looking him up and down with those black eyes.

“Oh?” Cullen gropes for words, suddenly very aware of how clean shaven he is. His uneasiness gnaws at him, and when Rende just stares at him he feels that nervous tide rise. Panic, pure and stupid. He has practiced and practiced for this, and a dozen heartbeats in he is sure he has already failed miserably.

 _Find common ground._ A voice at the back of his head—soft, certain, sure. He committed those words to parchment, committed her voice to his brain. It cuts through his apprehension and tethers him, strong as an anchor, back to the garden. He can do this. Rende is a military man, and by the looks of it, hates these functions as much as Cullen does.

“I—well,” he attempts. “I could have waited till I was gray in the temples, but then perhaps we’d have bigger things to worry about than a party at the Winter Palace.”

Rende snorts. “True enough,” he says. “Though I would enjoy the exercise. But I am not a young man any longer.” He eyes Cullen again.

Cullen shrugs. “It seems to be a theme of my life." 

“I’m not sure I would have used your approach at Adamant." Rende changes tack so quickly Cullen scarcely has time to blink. “Too much maneuvering for so tight a space.” _They will test you._ Her voice, again. But Cullen is well-prepared for this defense, at least.

“The Inquisitor was interested in saving as many lives as possible, soldier and Warden alike," Cullen says. “It was a long siege, yes, but low casualty.”

“You scared the piss out of all Orlais.” Rende looks wistful.

Cullen almost smiles. “I think they wanted us to burn Adamant to the ground. Yet, here we stand, _sans_ demons.” He pauses, unable to help himself. “And it was a historical landmark, after all.”

That makes Rende laugh, a single, harsh _ha_ Cullen recalls from the throats of older templars. Greagoir, in particular.

“You are Fereldan,” he observes. “Our pride can only take so much.”

“Then Orlais should stop calling me ‘the Lion of Skyhold.’”

“Our revenge, I think,” says Rende, “for being in your debt.”

Cullen sees a connection. “I am in yours, ser,” he corrects. “Your archers need none of the training that most of our recruits do.”

“So they serve well?”

“They save me a headache.” This earns him another snort. “They make their own bows,” Cullen continues. “Many archers do, but all archers from your house take it as nearly sacred duty.”

“No one should know a bow better than the one wielding it,” Rende says, “and there’s only one way to do that.”

“Pragmatic,” he admits. He remembers Josephine in her chair, her head in her hand. _Be honest._ She’d looked him straight in the eye across the desk. _Don’t try to lie. Your face is like an open book._ “For Orlesians, of all people.”

“We intermarried with a Fereldan family during the Storm Age.” Only Rende's eyes smile, but Cullen reads it clear as day. “Our darkest secret.”

“I shall keep it,” he says, and then his tongue stills in his mouth. Here, open as a doorway, is his chance. 

In the beginning, Cullen had refused to ask anyone for anything ever again after the letter debacle.It took Josephine weeks to convince him. _People want to give, Commander_ , she had said, in a voice that felt like a hand on his shoulder. _They don’t want the world to end either. So hand them an opportunity. That’s all it is._

“I shall keep it,” he says again, “and perhaps we may find ourselves with an excess of archers.”

“Perhaps you will.” Rende strokes his beard. “If the civil war ends tonight, I will have handfuls of idle bowmen. Four units worth.” He shudders. “Do me the favor of taking them.”

“My hope,” says Cullen, “is they remain idle until they return to you old men and women.”

Rende regards him for a long time. Cullen’s gut clenches in a twist of anxiety at the pause. “More military men should think that way,” Rende finally says. “Not of conquest, but of life.”

 _I have seen enough death_ , Cullen thinks. But instead he shrugs and says, “The Inquisition is for life, ser. For peace.” He adjusts his hands behind his back. “What does stopping the end of days matter if there is no world left to go back to?”

“Wise, for a Fereldan,” says Rende.

“They aren’t my words,” Cullen admits, and this earns him a clap on the shoulder.

 “ _Longue vie_ , Commander.” Rende’s voice is gruff but honest. “If you survive Orlais, you are ready for the Old God.”

“And to you,” Cullen says, and bows. He has no idea what he said. He will need to ask Josephine or Leliana later. Rende turns on his heel and drifts away. Just like that, it is over. And he is alive, with dignity intact, and a spoil to show for his efforts.

It was not so bad, admittedly. And she was right—he did like him. Strange victory. Underneath his ever-present weariness and vigilance, a few giddy pearls of relief appear.

He turns, and Varric stands only a few feet away, arms crossed.

“I told you to wait,” Cullen says.

“I wanted to see this in action.” Varric looks up at him. “Lessons, huh?”

Cullen doesn’t dignify this with an answer, and motions for Varric to walk with him. The DuHasette from Val Firmin is unoccupied, and he has work to do. Varric only laughs, and follows.

 

~~~

 

They gather again by the fountain to enter the palace properly. There’s not enough time for much chatter. Josephine is adjusting Trevelyan’s jacket again, Dorian and Arram appear in a flutter, Leliana following a step behind. She and the ambassador share a look and a nod. He hopes it’s a good sign.

Josephine turns to them. “After we present ourselves to the Empress, find a place to remain stationary. Make them come to you.” They talked about this before—it was Cullen’s idea. An issue of safety, in case all chaos might break loose.  Josephine eyes Trevelyan. “Except you,” she amends, “do whatever you need to do.”

It is good to see Trevelyan smile a little. “ _Whatever_ , Josephine? My, my, my.”

“Try not to let anyone see you, my lady,” she says. “And please, don’t—” She cuts herself off, eyes widening.

“Ruffles?” says Varric.

A word escapes Josephine’s mouth, a blend of exasperation, fury, and worry like he has never heard from her: “ _Yvette._ ”

“Go,” says Leliana, passing into the center of the circle just as Josephine is sliding out. He watches her stride across the yard, following the tails of a small woman in white skirts before they both disappear through a high archway. “Her sister,” continues Leliana, “seems to have thought it prudent to attend the ball as well. I’m sure she’ll rejoin us in a moment.” She motions to them and they begin to head inside.

He knew Josephine had brothers, brothers who built ships in Antiva, but no mention of a sister. He discovers a peculiar emptiness in him, the kind left only by the realization of how little he knows about someone—well, _her_. And what he does know, beyond professionalism, beyond alliances and attempting to stave off the end of the world, adds up to very little. Gifts of violets, dust on gold, sixteen hand raises, dates, drops of ink on long fingers, a braid that is well done in the morning and all a flutter by nightfall. The list begs for more.

But no. Cullen’s chest pangs in sympathy. They are here to stop an assassination. An unexpected obstacle.

 

~~~

 

“Garish,” says Dorian, peering up at the enormous gold ceiling, “but lovely.”

They are waiting to be presented to the Empress. Cullen cranes his neck to examine the ceiling alongside Dorian. “And it’s less so in Tevinter?”

“No,” says Dorian, “but it’s _magic_ , and thus too impressive to be garish.” He yawns. “I’ve seen more elaborate, but as far as what the south has to offer…”

Cullen is not impressed—he would never admit it—but he has never been in a place like this. The ceiling curls and sweeps with delicate fleur-de-lis patterns, all gold and ivory.  The chandelier glows with the light of at least a hundred candles, making the entirety of the ballroom the intimacy of sleeping quarters. Too many shadows. It gives him a headache. What good is this in times of war? Even the Viscount’s great hall in Kirkwall was somewhat functional. Cullen prefers the perfunctory nature of stone, of iron, of dragonbone. Perhaps if the Viscount had a chandelier like Celene’s, they could have dropped it on the Arishok. But he can think of no better use.

Dorian has lived such a life that a place like this evokes a quip and a yawn, and no more. Leliana and Josephine once called this a kind of home, a place to serve, and they were once just as ever-present as the candles and the sweeping azure banners. 

Below them, the dance floor is clear as water, so meticulously polished he can see the full reflections of the men and women upon it. He wonders how it was crafted, how long it took, how much sweat and how many men and women on their knees. Maker take him, the waste.

Yet it is so _clean._ And well-maintained. _That_ , well. Perhaps if he was a king, he could live with a floor so pristine. But what a useless exercise to meditate upon.

Josephine appears, as though from nowhere, beside him, rejoining their small group.

“Is your sister alright?” asks Trevelyan.

“If alright might translate into _willful_ , _stubborn,_ or _insane_ , yes, Inquisitor.” Josephine looks tired, but she smiles. “I’m sorry for leaving so abruptly.”

As they linger, waiting in the grand hall to be presented to the empress, their disadvantage becomes painfully clear. All those in their finery turn their heads and approach with varying degrees of subtlety as the Inquisition waits to head down the golden stairs. Like mabari on the scent of meat.

Josephine was clear about this—once inside the palace, Trevelyan speaks to no one before she speaks to the empress. Cullen hadn’t quite understood it, but it was about acknowledging an equal, of presenting their expertise. _I know Celene,_ she had said, smoothing her skirts, _and it is a move she will notice._

The guests glide toward them at all angles. They must be flocking to see them presented to the empress.   He watches their masked faces turn towards their little group, watches the change in their posture as they spot their prey and advance. For a moment, the inquisiton seems without defense agains the threat of being overrun.

But no noble ever makes it to Trevelyan. Josephine steps forward to intercept the first group, a pair of men in green masks and gold shoes, and then when another appears Leliana is there almost instantly. Occasionally he watches their eyes meet over nobles’ shoulders, glances meaning _turn_ or _behind you._ They head them off at every pass, sliding from group to group without hesitation.

None of the guests even gets close. It is one of the strangest, most graceful sights he has ever witnessed. He loses track of both of them and finds himself watching Josephine: every noble turns away smiling, or laughing, or both. They flitter away, but only when she bids—he marvels at the control of it all. She bows so precisely, lets them take her gloved hand, stands straight and tall in uniform as though she were made for it.

He muses on what Varric said, that she is out of place. To think she might be out of place anywhere—here, Skyhold, Haven, in uniform instead of dress, on the dirt roads of Ferelden, in the palaces of kings—is impossible. She is always, unequivocally and without fail, herself.

His first mistake, perhaps—assuming a smile meant to placate instead of making way for words. Deception. Assuming someone who knew each tone of her voice and what it could do _must_ wear many masks, when she needs none. He watches her smile at man in a giant hat covered in silver netting, watches her tilt her head and listen.

“ _Cullen_ ,” hisses Dorian, nearly kicking him in the instep of his boot, “for the Maker’s sake, _stop staring._ ”

 

~~~

 

Dorian’s allusion to Andraste is more accurate than he anticipated. But he is attempting—no. It’s _miserable._

Somehow he is ensconced in a corner, which is his first mistake. He is not where he’s supposed to be standing, but there’s a large golden statue at his post instead. And then someone had asked him to dance, and then another person had asked him about his hair, and then about his uniform, and all of a sudden he is cornered by a veritable wall of people who encroach closer and closer, laugh by laugh.

Being polite focuses his mind, but it’s hard to see over their heads, and he’s supposed to be on watch for safety’s sake. The stress triggers a lyrium headache; the dull pain pinches at the back of his brain. 

He keeps trying to excuse himself, to move, but then another person will slide in and say _bonjour, Commander—perhaps a drink?_ And he will take a step back, refuse cordially, and be right back where he started. They creep too close. It makes it hard to breathe. His hands clench behind his back and he squares his shoulders, polite but firm. Cornered by their crowding bodies, their tittering laughter and seeking eyes, he vows to endure. He can do it. He must.

But then another woman slides her hand up his arm; someone asks him a question about his many lovers and plays with a button on his jacket. And then a man grabs him, an entire handful of him between the legs—the scabbard of Cullen’s sword scratches against the wall in his haste to step away. _You’re quite tempting_ , he says, and Cullen’s throat fills with bile, his heart thudding in anxious panic. It reminds him of another time, another trap. Every echo of victory and assuredness from the garden has long since disappeared.

This was a mistake—he should never have come. It does not matter, his efforts are useless, _worthless_ ,  and he is not enough. He isn’t ready, could never be—what was he _thinking_ —

“ _Mesdames et messieurs_ ,” comes a clear, gentle voice from the back of the crowd, and he sees a familiar dark head. Josephine angles her way in with a string of extremely polite-sounding Orlesian. She nods to him, and then the little crowd parts and he follows her out of it. Josephine says a few phrases with a bow of her head, the nobles laugh. He remembers to breathe.

They step away, free. “Thank you,” he says, voice a little raw.

She gives him a half-smile. “Of course,” she says. “You need a break. Walk with me.”

They can’t go far, but they circle back to the ballroom. “I don’t think I prepared you properly for this,” she continues, sounding a little guilty.

“You did tell me they like foreigners.”

“Yes,” says Josephine, “but perhaps I didn’t give adequate warning of their enthusiasm.” She pauses, considering him. “Is it horrible? How many have asked you to dance?”

“ _Seventeen,_ ” Cullen responds instantly, miserably, and then feels ashamed. “Seventeen, and then three people asked to woo me, and one wanted to engage in _matrimonial negotiations._ ”

He waits for her to laugh; it never comes. “Very Orlesian,” she says. “And inappropriate. I should have warned you better.”

Cullen shrugs. “You didn’t know,” he reminds her. “I certainly didn’t think a man would grab me like he was weighing me for market—”

Josephine cuts him off with a stark, “ _Excuse me?_ ”

“Ah,” he mutters, self-conscious. “He—well.”

She waves her hand; it does not bear repeating, apparently. “Do you know who it was?” she asks, her voice calm. But he can hear the strain to remain polite behind it. A strange sound, coming from her. 

“I don’t,” Cullen admits. “He had black gloves, a silver mask with raven’s feathers.”

She nods, then marshals herself. “I’m sorry,” she says simply. “How intolerable.”

“It’s not your fault.” The tips of his ears heat, and they round a corner.

“Regardless,” says Josephine, “I will take care of it.”

The way she says it sounds ominous, and Cullen opens his mouth to tell her there is no need, not for him, but yet another Orlesian crosses their path, dressed in simple robes of grey and lavender. He is tall and strong of shoulder, and his mask is only a ribbon tied elegantly across his face.

The lines in Josephine’s posture straighten, her eyes shifting to new quarry, and he senses the air change between them.

“My lady Josephine,” he says, brightly. “You return to us.”

She bows, a perfect angle. “My lord. May I present Commander—”

“I know him,” the lord interrupts smoothly, offering a hand. “The Lion of Skyhold, yes? Welcome to the Winter Palace.”

Cullen takes it, raises it with a small bow. And he marks the interruption. “ _Enchanté,_ ” he says.

“Commander,” Josephine says, “this is Comte Marcus Dufort of Montsimmard. His textile trade is one of the busiest and best-kept in all Orlais.” 

“Please, my dear,” he replies, “I only have the good name and the good fortune to keep it so.”

The tone of his voice is perfectly pleasant.  Cullen cannot name the subtlety, but it does not seem so good natured. He has no language for it, just intuition—but it is a slight.

“Fortune favors the boldness of your family,” Josephine says, her hands behind her back.

“It is good to see you,” he repeats. “I must confess, you are just as changed as I thought you might be from your time in the mountains.”

Josephine laughs. “Changed?” she asks. “Marquise Julietta said the same thing. As though I might come back covered in furs, with snow in my hair from the Frostbacks.”

“A true surprise.” The comte’s eyes glitter. “But here you are, presenting yourself to the empress with Tevenes and templars alike. Were I a betting man, I might have lost.”

“Comte, I would never let you make that bet.” Josephine smiles. “It was a new challenge, no? For the good of Thedas. What else could make me leave this place?” 

“But my lady, you return in these... _ve_ _stments_. A military uniform!” He clicks his tongue. “Trousers, of all things. Our Josephine, our little gold _colombe_ , I barely recognize you.”

Cullen cannot parse from context what the Orlesian word means, but Josephine stiffens. They had talked about it at the uniform at the war table—well, Josephine had told them what they would do. _It’s a statement,_ she had said, twirling her quill, _that we are one. And we are only part of their Game for an evening. It will make them think. They haven’t had to_ think _for a long time._

The comte continues without notice, without giving Josephine a chance to speak. “You might be surprised, Commander,” he says, “to know she has a reputation as a peacemaker. I remember when Lord Hallivan warred with a minor house—he turned back every time their paths crossed in the halls, for he knew ten minutes with Josephine would talk him out of it.”

“Unsurprising,” Cullen says, probably a little too directly. “I have been that noble.”

“So you can account for the rumors, perhaps.” The comte crosses his arms, regarding them both.

“My dear comte,” says Josephine, “I hardly believe I’m exciting enough to have cultivated rumors.”

He goes on in curious tones like she hasn’t spoken. “She scours the border between Orlais and Ferelden to recruit soldiers for war-mongering. She plans to bully Nevarra into peace with _Tevinter_ , of all places. And every time the Inquisitor sits in judgment and calls down the sword, Josephine stands at her side.”

Uneasiness rises in Cullen’s chest—is he supposed to answer? The only words he can find are _you know absolutely nothing about her work and even less about the point of the Inquisition._

Then the toe of Josephine’s boot touches his—he is sure it is deliberate, a move commanding him to _hold._

So he does.

“You are not wrong, Comte Dufort,” she begins, smiling and smoothing her jacket. “Unfortunately, I cannot reason with the Old God come to end our time. I might have tried, if he had made an appointment.” Cullen watches the comte smile, but the curve of it is cold. “But everyone across Thedas is in peril. Someone must protect them. I choose not to wield a sword, so I must find someone who does.” 

“I don’t know,” he sighs, adjusting the ties of his mask. “I feel we are in a game where you must say every word describing _war_ without voicing the phrase itself.”

“I thought perhaps we both already knew we were at war.” Josephine’s voice is the epitome of patience. Cullen does not understand it. “Yet the Inquisitor takes action to save Orlais before we are allied. She rescues troops in the Exalted Plains, rebuilds infrastructure, finds homes for refugees. There is a great deal more to war than just a drawn sword.”

“Yet, the Josephine I knew would never call a fortress her home, and spend her days with those who cherish their strength of arms.”

“My comte,” says Josephine, “there is never a more important time to have a pacifist at the table than in times of war.” She smiles. “After all, who will remember when it is time to put the sword away?”

He frowns, and Cullen knows Josephine has won. A bell begins to ring, a summons to the ballroom.

“If you will excuse us, my lord,” Josephine apologizes, and bows. Cullen follows her lead. “We must meet the Inquisitor.”

“Of course,” says the comte with a sweeping bow. “Be well, my lady.”

Cullen falls into step alongside her as they walk away. “Did I just watch a duel?” he asks, a little stunned now the battle is over.

Josephine chuckles. “How dramatic,” she says. “He never liked me. His son has great diplomatic aims. If only his father would stop talking.”

“What did he call you?” Cullen inquires.

Josephine’s eyes narrow in thought, and then she sighs. “Oh,” she says. “ _Colombe._ ‘Dove.’”

An unoriginal moniker for a pacifist. Before he can say so, she continues. “Many in Celene’s court,” Josephine murmurs, “fought me for _years_ on the idea of any kind of peace—the nobility thrives on snatching power from each other by word or by force.” She adjusts her glove. “And here I am, at the side of the sword, and they revel at the chip in my armor.”

His brow furrows. “Is it always like that?”

“Not always,” she answers. “He is—passionate, and not as subtle as he used to be. I am accustomed to it.” She shrugs, as though acquaintances questioning her moral compass are a day-to-day triviality, their slights against her reputation thrown pebbles against a shield.

Words from Leliana: _people are unconscionably rude to Josephine every day. Do not add yourself to their ranks_. Watching one exchange had been exhausting.

“I am sorry,” he says, though he half-apologizes for himself.

Josephine blinks. “Why?” she asks. “This is what I do.”

He opens the door for her into the ballroom. “Where would you like me to stand?” he asks, watching the many onlookers file in.

“With me,” Josephine admits. Those two words make the back of his neck flush. But the room is warm. “I need someone to remind me to breathe while Trevelyan dances with the Duchess Florianne."

And so he follows her to the balcony.

 

~~~

 

Cullen worries when Trevelyan is late, but Josephine says the Orlesians have a deep appreciation of fashionable tardiness.

“How do you do this,” he asks, an eyebrow raised, “so calmly?”

“If I am not calm, then I have already lost,” she answers. “And if I am not calm then no one else will be.”

“Are you not worried?”

“Incredibly,” Josephine admits, “but what good does that serve?” She rests her hands on the railing, looks out over the crowd.

He spots Varric and Dorian across the way. Varric is shaking his head at him. Dorian has a hand over his eyes. Leliana must be somewhere, and he can spot Arram’s head at the very back.

“Ah, Commander, look.” Josephine’s voice retakes his attention. “By the gold statue in the east corner. The woman in orange and red.”

He focuses. “What of her?”

Josephine just shakes her head and watches. He follows suit. The noblewoman sports an enormous hive of blonde and gray hair, covered in nets of diamonds.

He opens his mouth, and she whispers, “Wait.” A handful of moments later, the heads of two little yellow birds peer out over the tall crown of hair.

Cullen’s jaw drops. “Maker guide me,” he whispers, and Josephine grins.

“Did you think I lied?” she says.

“No,” he admits, “but that’s not quite the same thing as believing it was true.”

A third bird emerges, completing the trio. “She always wears three,” Josephine explains. “It is her signature. Birds have been out of fashion for _years._ Yet, she holds her head high.”

“Ambassador,” Cullen murmurs, “they are looking at you.”

“You are a fool,” says Josephine.

“They are,” he replies. “Perhaps they remember you. Perhaps they want to thank you for your service.”

Josephine laughs softly, a hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shake with it. “Do not make me laugh, Commander,” she murmurs. “We are here to stop an assassination.” 

“Ah,” says Cullen, “more’s the pity.”

Trevelyan enters in a flutter, looking ragged around the edges but no worse for wear. He watches Josephine inhale, look her over, and then settle into uneasy relief.

“At least she is here,” he says.

“I should have lit a candle at the chapel before we left,” is all Josephine says.

 

~~~

 

Cullen watches the duchess and Trevelyan dance on the perfect floor. Again, his mind conjures a memory of Josephine trying to teach the Inquisitor a simple three-step waltz, the simplest of box dances, and now she moves with careful, practiced movements, taking the lead, twirling and—Cullen can articulate so little about dancing.

He only has to tell Josephine to breathe once, when Trevelyan must attempt to spin the duchess three times in a revolving pattern. He sees her hands grip the railing, the way her nails must be biting into her gloves.

“Ambassador,” he murmurs.

She inhales. “Thank you.”

And then it is over, almost as soon as it began. Everyone claps most politely. Across the way, he sees Dorian raise his hands to Josephine as he applauds, nodding. All this, all the hours of training, for ten minutes of dancing.

“She did very well,” Cullen tells her.

Josephine smiles, leans against the pillar. “I knew she could do it,” she says, satisfied. “I knew.”

He cannot help but say it. The words of the comte bother him. It bothers him, an Inquisition without Josephine, all of them here without her. “Without you,” he says, “it would not have happened.”

“Leliana would have made do with her,” Josephine says. “Perhaps more precariously, but yes.”

“I am sure,” Cullen replies. “Yet she would not have made do with me.”

“Perhaps,” she admits, “perhaps not. It was—well.”

A high laugh nearly makes him jump out of his skin—a group of sprightly, twittering Orlesians settle only a few feet away, giggling and pointing out the dancers below. He had almost forgotten they were surrounded by people, which rankles him for a hundred reasons. He misses the peace of a Skyhold night in his office, bent over notes and maps in the candlelight, practicing conversation. 

He takes a step closer so that he might hear her better. “Difficult?” he supplies. “A torment? A test of both patience and faith?”

This makes her chuckle. He takes a step closer to hear her better. “Rougher beginnings have better endings,” she tells him. “We are here and speaking—a mark of our victory, if nothing else.”

“Survival and relief,” he agrees. “A journey completed, and perhaps never retaken.”

She smiles at him then, easy and true, like the sun coming out. “Ah, Commander,” she says, “I would do it again for you." And she turns her head back to the floor, where the guests have taken up their partners again. "You listen."

The dancers sway and revolve in soft arcs, accompanied by the music of their silks brushing the perfect floor. But their laughter cannot touch Cullen, cannot sway his attention from the pair of thoughts singing in him: _I listen_ and _she knows._ It warms him like embers in the pit of of his heart; his weariness is awake, alive, alight with it. _I do.  You know I do._

The _how_ of it matters little: it is Josephine, so she is in earnest. It is Josephine, and somehow it means the world. A few units of archers seem a pale victory in comparison, to be counted among the ranks of those who do not disregard her efforts and her strength. He does not understand how it happened. Yet, here they are.

She watches the dancers, and he watches her, and he notices there are tiny pearls in her usual braid, budding the black of her hair with pins of light. He did not notice before. He forgets to breathe.

If Cullen was a poet, he might think _like stars_. If he was a painter, he would wonder how to mix and make the exact nature of the opalescent glow. But he is neither, so he is content to stand here, to witness her as long as his legs might keep him up. To agree, in this place he hates, among people he cannot understand, for reasons that rake at him like claws, _I would do it again for you._  

He wonders what it means.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, but the night is far from over. Thank you so much for your commentary and feedback! Goodness.  
> tumblr: klickitats


	10. distraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the threads of Josephine's life tangle at Halamshiral. 
> 
> As always, thanks to entirely wonderful beta sunspeared.

The dancers swirl and part and come together over and over, graceful as the pairs of swallows Josephine would watch from her window in Antiva City. Two years ago, she would have flitted from partner to partner among them, relishing each turn under the candlelight and gathering secrets like gold caprices between her fingers. It is a world away from her now, and she feels each weary inch of distance. The memory settles over her heart, wistful as a sigh—there will be no dancing tonight, not for her. Too many plots to keep in orbit, and though Trevelyan’s missteps are few, the night is so very young.

She glances at Cullen to point out a military official taking a turn on the dance floor, and finds him already looking at her. Their eyes catch.

The world stills, just for a moment— _looking_ is not the right word for this, this _thing_ that is open and warm as a hand framing her face.

It _is_ only a moment, no more than the space between two heart beats, and they break away in unison.

Their heads turn, eyes back to the whirling dancers below. She hears him cough, sees him rub the back of his neck out of the corner of her eye before bracing himself against the bannister. She stands with arms still crossed, ignoring the flush up her spine and determinedly staring at the dancers. The night and nothing more.

“Where is your sister?” Cullen asks, his voice reaching through the fog and pushing them onward. Josephine gives a deep, near-grateful sigh. It is nothing, after all. And they have a task at hand.

“Over there, near Dorian. The bronze mask.” He nods. “He took her for a stroll around the gardens,” she says. There is a pause before she continues quietly, “My mother made her attend.”

Cullen blinks. “Why?” he asks, a little too bluntly. “Of all nights, _tonight?_ ”

It’s too much to explain now. “Appearances,” Josephine explains, rubbing a temple. “Practice. She’s terrible at court.”

He slowly sucks in a breath between his teeth. “I will adjust one of our people,” he decides, “and place them closer to the both of you.”

“I already have someone,” Josephine says, “and we brought so few in.” Two masquerading as ball guests, two as servants—mostly Leliana’s people. One for each of them and the Inquisitor. Just in case.

But Cullen shakes his head. “I will move mine,” he tells her.

“That’s supposed to be for you.”

He taps the pommel of his sword. “I’ll be fine,” he reassures. Josephine doesn’t respond, hesitant and quietly adjusting her glove.

“Please.” He looks at her, raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you have enough to worry about tonight?”

He’s not wrong. “I—yes,” she says, “Yes. Thank you.”

“No need.” He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

They watch the Inquisitor leave the floor and whisk out of the ballroom with all three of their companions in tow. The crowd begins to wane and disperse. Josephine watches Yvette slide out the ballroom doors amidst them in an attempt at stealth, and makes a noise Cassandra would be proud of.

Cullen chuckles, a low and rusty sound. “Should you fetch her?”

“Yes,” Josephine groans. “Excuse me.”

But she pauses before she turns, glancing across the wide expanse of the room. She wonders if she should speak, or if he will take it as offense or an accusation of weakness. But no. They must be past that tonight. “If you stand between those two windows,” she says, gesturing across the way, “you will have three exits—one to each side, and the stairs. You won’t be cornered.”

“Ah.” Cullen looks across the way as well. “You think they will amass in number again?” She can sense the little knots of tension underneath his voice.

Josephine half-smiles. “They’re Orlesians,” she says, “Persistent."

“Indeed,” he replies, exhaling on a long breath. “I will station myself there, then.”

She watches him steel himself, the lines of his shoulders set in iron and determination. He looks like a prince going into battle, she thinks idly, with his sword and his red coat. _I’m sorry_ , she wants to say. _I would make this easier for you, were it in my power._

“Leliana will be close by,” she tells him, “and I will be just here, across the way. If you were to need us.” She hesitates, and then asks, serious as the grave, “Will you be all right?”

 He cocks his head a little, and then places a fist against his breast in mock salute. “I will be fine,” he says, the corner of his mouth curving up, just a little. “You have given me all the swords I need, remember?”

Josephine appreciates the attempt to put her at ease more than he knows. “Try not to pronounce anything new,” she says.

He snorts. “There will be no attempt.”

“Very good.” She nods. “It will be over soon enough.”

“I can endure,” he tells her, and she watches him walk away.

 

~~~

 

“Is that the stupid man you keep writing Laurien about?” Yvette cranes over the balcony, her annoyance pinching at Josephine. “Why do you keep looking over there?”

“Yvette, keep your voice down.”

“Well,” she demands, switching into Antivan and flicking her fan open to wave, “ _you’re_ the one who won’t stop writing about him.” She leans almost the entire upper half of her body over the bannister to scrutinize and Josephine thinks she might actually die. “ _Ah, Laurien, he is vicious with word and sword and understands so little about the world or its machinations. Even worse, he does not care._ ”

Josephine has not forgotten Yvette’s uncanny ability to remember anything she reads. “Laurien showed you my letters?”

“No,” says Yvette, “but he leaves his desk unlocked on occasion.”

“Those are not your affair,” snaps Josephine.

“No, _affair_ implies a compelling and worthwhile venture.” Yvette rolls her eyes. “As usual, you are preoccupied.” She flicks her fan back and forth. “You write about him in such vivid detail, Josie. _His hard-fisted meddling is so blunt I think his bones might be made of steel, instead of just his demeanor_.”

“Please—”

 _“A brute dressed in lion’s fur, prowling about Skyhold as though he owns the stone itself._ ”

“Yvette, stop,” Josephine orders.

“If you say so.” Yvette glances at her over the fan. “You wrote it.”

Josephine sighs. It is her only defense.

“It’s not my fault you make everything else sound so _mundane._ ” Yvette rolls her eyes. “Only you could make working for Tevinter mages and the Dalish and _Qunari_ sound boring.”

“That’s quite enough.” Josephine rubs her brow.

“What else am I supposed to talk about?” Yvette switches back into the common tongue. “You won’t let me talk to anyone _._ ”

“You talked to the Inquisitor.”

“You didn’t let me say _anything._ ” Yvette’s mutinous eyes flash.

This is the void, Josephine concludes, not the Winter Palace—being here and having to keep both her sister _and_ Trevelyan _and_ the Inquisition out of trouble. And the fact that they have _spoken_ to one another—hour by hour, the thin, carefully separated threads of Josephine’s life touch, tangling in knots she cannot undo. Is it not enough that she must drag Trevelyan to Val Royeaux tomorrow? Is it not enough that tonight the fate of a country lies in their hands? She rubs her temples—she knows better than to tempt fate with such questions.

“Oh,” sighs Yvette. “Look. Look at Duchess duValle’s dress.”

Josephine follows her gaze and finds herself spellbound—the deep red of the silk and the fine black lacework that covers it takes her breath away. They both stand there in quiet for a moment, breathing the same wistful sigh.

“Do you know how you get that red?” inquires Yvette, in that tone that says _I know and you don’t._

It’s more amusing than annoying; it reminds her of home. Josephine raises one wry eyebrow and says, “No, but I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”

“Antivan evergreens,” Yvette begins, “the kind that grow just past the city? These strange, little red bugs call them home.”

“Oh,” Josephine says with dawning horror, “no, _no._ ”

“Crushed and combined with the proper ingredients,” Yvette goes on, cheerful as the sun, “you make a magnificent _keremas_ red. The insects are only found in Antiva. _This_ red is from some plant.” She tugs at Josephine’s sleeve, wrinkling her nose. “But it doesn’t have the same depth _._ ”

“You’ve done this yourself.” Josephine is not asking a question.

“Papa and I go once, sometimes twice a month.” When Yvette fans herself, it makes the feathers on her mask sway just a little. “Who cares how you get it? Red is red."

“ _Artists_ ,” Josephine groans under her breath, and Yvette giggles as though on cue—an old bit between them. She leans with her back against the bannister, and when Yvette bends down to examine another dress, she sneaks a look over her shoulder across the way.

Cullen, surrounded by suitors and Orlesians, stands stalwart with his back to the wall. He looks calmer than before—the placement seems to have made a difference. Good.

What’s strange is just how _different_ he looks holding the same stance she’s seen a hundred times before. The memory of standing with him at the center of a whirling mass of practicing soldiers as they waited for the Wardens plays in her mind: shoulders set under steel, arms crossed, posture straight, alert and ready, yet…at peace. At home amongst the cacophony of shields and blades. And now, every line of his body is rigid with tension.

They do not let him have even a breath between their questions. They ask for a turn on the floor, for wine, for a moment alone. Josephine cannot hear them but she knows this dance by heart.

One of them strokes a hand down the arm of his jacket; her stomach clenches. _Leave him be._ Can he not go ten minutes without some noble guest molesting him? Perhaps she should go over, pair herself with him on that side of the room so he is not so alone.

“He’s got those big Fereldan cow eyes.” Yvette’s voice, slightly disgusted, is right at her ear and she jumps about a foot in the air. “And so _pale._ ”

“Maker, Yvette!”

“The suit is fine on him, Josie, but what about Adorno? _Adorno._ ”

Josephine rubs the bridge of her nose. That had happened while they were still at Haven—a sternly-worded letter from her mother stating they’d begun negotiations with another house for a marriage. In a phrase, Josephine had quelled any notion of that prospect. Not when a breach to the Fade churned in the sky. Not when Thedas was being pulled apart by the seams, when Orlais kept clawing itself into shreds. Not when her own family could barely stay afloat, such were the ups and downs.

Josephine’s life now has all the makings of work for _years._ There’s not enough time in the day to write all the letters needed to keep both pieces of her life in tandem, let alone _eat_ or _sleep_ or _figure out what to do with a husband._

Ah, but the tone of her mother’s response: _what’s another?_ The letter was only a third of a parchment. It was just an engagement. Those could be put off for years. If she was truly serious about becoming head of the Montilyet house, why would she refuse such an opportunity for their advancement? None of these things were said, but she read them in the enormous blank space of the page just as well. Well, and the last sentence: _in this least of all did we expect you to disappoint._

Perhaps it had been the wrong time to defy her parents. Josephine will count her many failings as they come. But she could not bear it.

Laurien had avoided the subject when she’d pressed him in her letters. Yvette possesses no sense of tact, so Josephine takes the plunge.

“I should ask,” Josephine begins slowly, “how that went over. The letter was curt.”

“Mother cried,” Yvette says matter-of-factly, and Maker, will there be no mercy for Josephine tonight? “Papa was a comfort, but they took _years_ to choose for you, Josie! No one’s parents even take _half_ that time to choose the perfect match.”

“I know,” Josephine says quietly.

“Adorno Otranto is not only rich, he has business sense. And he’s in _Antiva_.”

So. He is home, and she is here. Josephine’s heart goes cold, and she forgets she is in the Winter Palace, surrounded by gold and silk and warm candlelight. Yvette continues in her blunt, but not unkind, diatribe: “He is kind and gentle—everyone says so. Perfect etiquette. Papa and Mama find him so agreeable. Who wouldn’t want that?”

And there it lies. Josephine remembers sitting at her desk in Haven, staring at the letter, staring at the lists and lists of this _Adorno Otranto_ and all the things he was. Staring at it and feeling so far from _feeling_ anything that there was no answer but _absolutely not._

The quiet between them stretches on and on until Josephine just shakes her head and mutters, “I don’t know,” with a helpless shrug of her shoulders.

Yvette clicks her tongue against her teeth. “At any rate,” she says, “it’s hypocritical.”

Josephine raises an eyebrow. “Because their marriage wasn’t arranged?”

“Because Mama married a painter who was heir to a failing merchant family,” says Yvette, as though it’s a common occurrence. “A Montilyet to her bones. We love the impossible. And apparently you love living a mountain cave.”

“It’s not a _cave._ ”

“It’s cold and snowy and wet and dark,” Yvette corrects. “A cave where you somehow run about Thedas and get into everyone’s business.”

“Is that what you all think?” Josephine asks, her tone dull. “That I’m just away playing games for the amusement of it?”

Yvette softens a little. “No,” she says, “Well—not all the time. They don’t understand, Josie. Laurien tries, but—we are afraid for you. You’ve never gone so long without coming home. When the world is falling apart, why _wouldn’t_ you?”

“We are ensuring that does not happen,” Josephine argues. “I protect our family, Antiva, all of it with the Inquisition.”

“Even if you were still at court,” Yvette goes on, “I think they would understand. Laurien tries his best to make them listen. Some days are better than others.” Josephine stares at the bannister, arms crossed. 

Yvette’s hand touches her arm. “They miss you,” she says. “We all miss you.”

Josephine eyes her. “You don’t miss me.”

“I do.” Yvette flicks her fan open again. “I miss your humming in the next room while you write your letters. Mama and Papa don’t smile as much. And only you can make Antoine say more than two sentences at a time.”

Yvette. Always the surprise. Josephine opens her mouth, but her sister beats her to it with a cough and a quip. “Even though if you came back—well.”

Josephine’s eyes narrow. “What did you do?”

“Don’t be cross with me.” Yvette is already indignant, so Josephine knows _exactly_ what is going on.

“You turned my room into a studio, didn’t you?”

“It’s not as though you’re using it!”

“Yvette,” Josephine says, patting her gently on the arm, “I would slap you, if I did not miss you so.”

“You should _always_ miss me.” Yvette flutters her eyelashes. “Even when I’m just in the next room.”

Josephine dissolves into giggling, unable to help herself. Yvette flicks her fan and puts her nose up.

A trio of masks appears around a pillar, white gloved hands smoothing lavishly plumed dresses of grey and cream. She touches Yvette’s arm.

“Will you be alright,” Josephine asks seriously, “for fifteen minutes?”

Yvette glares. “ _I_ want to go meet the empress.”

“You just want to see her dress up close.”

“It’s so blue,” Yvette sighs, snapping her fan shut. “I want to paint fish swimming in it.”

Josephine presses a kiss to her cheek, a gesture that deepens Yvette’s scowl most satisfyingly. “Stay put. I’ll be back in a moment.”

The three ladies-in-waiting fold around Josephine, and Fleur tugs at the tassel of her jacket.

“This is deMirelle’s work, is it not?” She clicks her tongue. “So…striking.”

Josephine nods her head in thanks, and in no time at all they are opening the heavy doors to Celene’s private balcony. The trio leaves them be. Celene sighs, deep and soft as the wind, her shoulders rising and falling just slightly. The deep hue of her dress and the lovely, golden spikes of her collar give the impression of sea, sky, and sun all at once: the entirety of night and day. Just as Celene would have it.

“Your majesty.” Josephine bows and the empress turns away from the ledge, framed by the moon.

“Josephine,” she says. This close, the tiny wrinkles that line Celene’s eyes, dabbed with pale powder, cannot be hidden. More than the last time they met. She wears gloves now too, to hide the creases in her hands. Kissing her ring for the first time, her stomach knotted with nerves, Josephine had admired her impossibly smooth fingers. But that was many years ago.  “How good to see you.”

“And you,” she replies simply, because it is true.

“What does the Inquisition think of our little _soiree?_ ” Celene turns back to the balcony, looking to the guests in the garden. 

“They are overwhelmed, I think,” Josephine admits, and this earns her a soft huff of amusement. “Lord Pavus, the magister’s son, sends his compliments on your roses.”

“A mage of Tevinter, complimenting my roses? What a night.”

In truth, Dorian had remarked _they couldn’t be brighter if you’d sacrificed a man’s hand to make them red_ , but Josephine says, “They are lovelier than anything magic can make.”

“He is of the right mind,” Celene replies, “to appreciate the Winter Palace.”

Josephine lets the silence between them sit. After all, there is a whole war between them to consider. In the same year Josephine left the Empress’ court, civil war tore Orlais in two. It is not arrogance to divine this from the current state of affairs, but it only takes the absence of a single voice to let atrocities pass unchecked and unchallenged.

Though Gaspard, she supposes, is _such_ a beloved fool that reason, logic, and peace might have fled anyway. It does not matter now.

Celene breaches the quiet. “Your Inquisitor bears your fingerprints,” she says. “You always liked those two extra turns in the _allemande._ ”

Josephine smiles. “A good dance should offer a challenge and a surprise.”

“Florianne found her enchanting.”

Josephine makes a low noise of agreement. “I know—she’s danced with no one else all night.”

 “Does your Inquisitor know,” Celene asks, “of Florianne’s love of imports from other lands?”

“She’s only the daughter of a minor Marcher noble,” Josephine responds. But of course she knows. That was what had inspired her to make Trevelyan learn the complicated dance. “But I suppose being touched by the Fade adds a certain…mystique.” She mulls over that for a moment. “And Florianne is fond of green.”

“All that is green and glitters.” Celene’s eyes crinkle, the equivalent of a belly laugh from a commoner, a loud snicker from a marquise. “Warn your Inquisitor.”

“Consider it done. Trevelyan will dance no more.”

 “And yourself? We miss your particular enthusiasm,” Celene tells her, the corner of her mouth arching just a little, “for the art. Yet, tonight of all nights, you are without your usual queue.”

Josephine almost blushes, and for a moment she is twenty again. Her first real victory of the Game as ambassador had been on the floor: a displaced Ander noble with a fist so tight around the biggest trading port in the Anderfels no one had managed a trade agreement with him in fifteen years. One night, Josephine noticed the ever-so-slight tapping of his heel to an old waltz—so slight, in fact, she’d kept watch for a whole week to see if he did it again. After that, it was only a matter of time, a gold sovereign to the right musician, and an outstretched hand as an Ander _rondelet_ began.

The flush of victory tastes just as sweet as it did then. There’d been talk of just assassinating him (gently, of course) to move things along—a marquis had questioned Josephine thoroughly about her connection to the Antivan Crows.  Completely unacceptable. 

“I regret that tonight is for business,” she admits, “and not for pleasure.”

“A pity. Business with _La Colombe_ was always a pleasure.” This is as wry as the Empress allows herself to be, and Josephine appreciates it for what it is. “That was your hallmark. Or have the barbarians on the border beaten that out of you?”

Josephine raises an eyebrow. “Skyhold _is_ in Orlais, your majesty.”

“The borderlands are wild,” is all Celene allows, an elegant eyebrow arched. 

Josephine has always appreciated this about Orlais—even in the most horrific times, amusement remains a human necessity. This exists in all the cultures Josephine has ever known, though Orlais is the only one so far to formalize the concept.

“The Nightingale and I believe this ball ranks among your finest,” Josephine tells her.

“But not _the_ finest?”

“No,” she says. “Wintersend, seven years ago.” Josephine always traveled back to Antiva for the high holidays, but that had been a particularly lean year for the Montilyets.

Celene nods her agreement. “A lovely choice.” But even her gentle tone cannot hide the way her spine hardens into iron. Ah, yes—Briala’s first Wintersend at court. _Still a fresh wound_ , Josephine marvels. Of course it is. Josephine can recall each detail of that night perfectly; it had changed everything.

The empress of Orlais must wear contentment like lacquer on porcelain—a mask on a mask, never revealing anything below the surface. But that night, the truth was simple: Celene was happy. She danced for the first time in a year, drank a cup of wine. Subtle motions, to be sure. But Josephine had attended court for two years by then, and had never seen the like.

Most of the court had refused to speak to Briala. Josephine found her sense of justice invigorating, a challenge to the way of life so many nobles could not bear to think of changing. She made no attempt to hide her wily cleverness or her passion for the elves and peasants of Orlais. Briala gave voice to the people; in short, she inspired her.

Josephine knew little of their connection. In the morning, nursing a headache, she found a simple letter inviting her to the empress’ chambers after dinner. And nothing was the same.

Countless fireside meetings after midnight in Celene’s quarters, with Josephine pouring over treaties with Briala and the empress’ aides, working with her on the most precise and concise verbiage to establish a ceasefire for a house war tearing up the streets of Montsimmard, discussing alienage reform with her and Briala with the door locked and bolted became the norm. It was not long after her victory with the Ander noble, after all. Josephine was for peace, everyone knew it, and she found her skills put to hard work.

The three of them nursed a dream for a new Orlais, slow as it was. And it was the making of them: Celene, the reformer, Briala, the revolutionary, and Josephine…not simply the eldest child of a failing Antivan merchant house, but a presence. _Someone._

Those are Josephine’s memories of Orlais, no matter how grand the balls and feasts ever were. Long nights in Celene’s suite, forging a new future. Leaving the royal boudoir past the midnight bell, alone. Briala never left.

Aloud, she continues, “I might say—perhaps this ball is perhaps the most _vital_ of any I have attended.” She pauses. “The mediations carry on smoothly, I hope?”

Celene glances at her, and then back over the garden. The long pause indicates the misstep. “It must be strange for you,” the empress says slowly, “to not be hidden in the treaty room on a night like tonight.”

It strikes Josephine—not cruel, like a slap, but jarring all the same. Briala is gone from her,Josephine left, and that world, guarded by the quiet of night in Celene’s rooms, ended.

 _Briala_ was truly the reason it had worked, Josephine knew. The two touched frequently over maps and parchment, long fingers twined around wrists, or smoothing hair, or resting on the nape of the neck. Celene kissed Briala’s hands to pull her from melancholy—Josephine saw it once, when they thought her back was turned in the shadow of the firelight. Briala, hunched over in a chair, despondent over a string of murders in the Dales. Celene on her knees, head bent, each breath a promise. Perhaps the only time she’d ever bowed to anyone. 

Peace, then, born out of love. Josephine had kept their secret dutifully. But now it is gone, fresh wounds left in the wake of it. Years since Josephine left court, and years since Celene pushed Briala from her side, and yet the empress has shown her cards.

It is both pain and hope.

“Your Inquisitor,” Celene goes on, “will have much to tell you on the matters at hand.”

The three ladies-in-waiting appear at the entrance to the balcony, twittering and giggling as they curtsey. Josephine bows at the waist, on cue.

“Your Majesty,” Josephine says, “be well.” She must know a greater game is afoot tonight—she and

Leliana discussed it at length—even with their messengers killed. The fact the Inquisition is here at all must indicate it at the very least, not to mention that tonight the civil war ends, one way or another. Celene is not stupid and never has been.

“And you.” Celene inclines her head just so. “I look forward to speaking with your Inquisitor again. She’s quite spirited.”

“And polite, I hope.”

“Her focus and priority are well placed.” Ah, then Celene _did_ notice. Good.

Josephine bows once more. “I hope she continues to prove exceptional.”

“She is one of _La Colombe’s_ ,” Celene tells her. “I expect nothing less.”

It is a half-apology. All it does is bitter the taste in Josephine’s mouth. And then she is whisked away, knowing just as much as when she stepped onto the balcony in the first place.

She goes the long way back to the ballroom, needing a moment to breathe. Celene brought her here to reminisce and acknowledge, just as Josephine would do with an old contact and connection. It is not heartless, just reality. She is the Inquisition’s, no? And proud to be. Happy to be. It’s not a misstep, not quite. Only a gentle reminder. Unbidden irritation rides up her spine, the frustration of knowing the Inquisitor must move the Game—that Josephine is playing chess, but can no longer be the knight herself.

At least, not tonight. Maker, tonight of all nights. The helplessness of it all settles, bitter and stale, in Josephine’s mouth. Time to settle back into the ballroom and wait and wait and wait for the Inquisitor to call upon her, or to be approached by a noble wondering aloud why she’s wearing such a _violent_ uniform, or —

Josephine snaps her head to see a silver mask, silver gloves, all framed in elegant raven’s feathers disappear around the corner. A high, easy laugh follows.

Perhaps it is her grinding disappointment from her conversation with Celene, perhaps it is her anxiety over the machinations of the evening or the grating sound of that laugh. It all rushes at her in a reminder and nearly erases all that has passed before—the fact of the matter is, this is _easy_. The Game’s crushing defeats and soaring victories, the subtle moving of a thousand tiny pieces, the right word in the right place in the right tone are all hers.

Everything in her mind realigns to this one, simple fact: it is an unwritten rule of the Game not to truly toy with those who are new to it. It is an injustice frequently ignored. But not tonight.

She turns on her heel and pursues him around the corner, where she watches him examine his reflection in one of the many gold mirrors lining the hall. She knows this man—Marquis Armand de Pascal, heir to the oldest estate in Val Firmin—owner of a mine of rare, malleable dawnstone and guildmaster of a small league of craftsmen who can shape it. The moment she recognizes him, anger cracks and snaps in her like flame to kindling. Red slides across her vision so quickly she touches the wall for a moment, for balance.

Pascal has _always_ been this kind of man—too smart for his own good, too well-versed in pinpointing weakness wherever he goes and then selecting quarry accordingly. Josephine remembers well a feast where he planted himself next to the Tantervale ambassador’s daughter. By the end of the night the young girl had stabbed him through the palm with a paring knife, and her mother was no longer the ambassador from Tantervale. Pascal had disappeared into the shadows for few months, but the next year there he was, a smirk on his face and a scar on his hand as he watched dancers in the candlelight.

It is hard to think of Cullen, a man who wears armor and carries great burdens for his living, in need of defending. But he has tried _so hard._ Through the lyrium and the frustration and all their endless lessons, he has made an attempt to understand a culture and a way of life that is just as foreign, if not more so, than the beaches of Seheron or the streets of Par Vollen. And that has not only been compromised, but violated. She cannot bear it.

 _Wait_ , calls a voice at the back of her mind, but Josephine will wait no longer.

 “Marquis Pascal,” she calls as she approaches, a smile as sweet and peaceable as gold on her lips.

He turns from the mirror, his own grin bearing all his white, white teeth. “My lady,” he says with a deep bow. “I hoped you would find time for me tonight.”

“Of course,” Josephine says, offering him her hand. He kisses it, and her skin is glad for the gloves. “It is rare for me to be among you all at once these days—I must press my advantage while I can.”

“You are missed.” He adjusts his mask. “Especially with this heinous war. An unbearable business.”

 It sparks a light, and in a breath she finds exactly the way to take. Risky, and perhaps a mistake—she had been saving this for a more worthwhile opportunity. It is a heavy trap. But Josephine is not one to turn back.  “Quite,” she agrees. “For now, we can take a breath in the name of grand revelry.”

Pascal gives a sigh of relief. “Indeed,” he says, “and this evening, I have found reason to thank Andraste at least once an hour, if not every fifteen minutes.”

His words twist Josephine’s stomach in nausea. “Oh,” she teases, eyelashes fluttering just twice, “is the wine so potent?”

“What a coy little bird you are,” Pascal drawls. “The Winter Palace always brings the best out for display, does it not? There is much to admire.”

“The statues this year,” Josephine says, “are quite grand. The flowers are stunning.”

“And the people,” he finishes with a knowing grin. “Perhaps we should always have war, if mourning makes these sorts of flowers bloom.”

In another life, bile might rise in Josephine’s throat and the interaction would prove for a scathing passage in her next letter to Laurien. Tonight, of all nights, it curdles the very blood in her veins.

Earlier in the night, it had been mere chance she’d seen what happened—the dart and grab, the way Cullen’s sword scraped against the wall as he pulled away. She had nearly sprinted across the ballroom to whisk him out of the fray. The pale look on his face—remaining polite and stoic as a lifeline, the flash of panic in his eyes, the sheer relief in his shoulders when they exited his crowd of Orlesian admirers—the very _memory_ of it rakes at her with a demon’s persistence.

It has happened on her watch. If she is their admiral this evening, then they are under her protection _._ And Pascal has made tonight an insufferable struggle instead of the challenge it should be.

“Oh?” she says, leaning against the wall. “I’ve been more preoccupied than I thought.”

He snickers. “Or blind, my dear.” He adjusts his mask in the mirror. “The Severin Sisters are here from Montsimmard, as is Comte Chastain and Duchess Boucher, and it must be said…”

Josephine eyes him with a wary grin. “Yes?”

“Your Inquisition has proved outstanding on all accounts.” His eyes crinkle with thoughts of spoiled conquest.

It is a question from the void itself. “How so?” she asks, her hands clasped behind her back. The very image of attentiveness.

“Why, that dance with the Grand Duchess was divine, and you know it.” Pascal is looking back in the mirror, gently adjusting the set of his hat upon his head. “I don’t think anyone was ready for some mage girl from Ostwick to do _that._ ”

Josephine allows herself a smile. “You flatter me.”

“I mean to,” he says. “It will be the talk of the Winter Palace for at least a year. And your company—how can you all hide yourselves away in the mountains? It is criminal.”

“I have heard absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Josephine replies, and Pascal waves it away with his hand.

“You must come back,” he says. “Or perhaps I will visit. Mountain air might agree with me.”

“I find it lovely,” Josephine agrees.

Pascal gives a thin-lipped grin. “I imagine so,” he says. “The Nightingale is as illustrious as ever, after all, and your companions make a fascinating menagerie. A templar and a Tevinter magister, working in tandem? Incredible.” Josephine waits. She knows it is coming. “It does not hurt,” Pascal continues, “that they are all as beautiful as they are compelling.”

“You are too kind, my lord,” Josephine laughs just a little, hiding it behind her hand.

“They are,” he says simply. “Especially that brooding Fereldan. What a discovery, Josephine.” He sighs, making a final adjustment to a feather. “Who knew anyone worthwhile could emerge from that dog-piss country?”

He does not wait for Josephine’s response, too gleeful to contain himself. “We have _engaged_ in some negotiations.” He grins, wide and sour.  “He is, ah, well-built in every way the Maker intended. Andraste preserve my soul if I do not survive the night.”

 _I will leave you with nothing,_ Josephine promises, cold as bone. Her rage vibrates with every steady inhale and exhale as she looks him in the eye. _You will never look him in the eye again._ A flush heats the back of her neck. _Any of us_ , she amends.

 “Indeed,” Josephine agrees, a little smile. “I have heard business booms for you, my lord. You will emerge from the war unscathed.” It is an abrupt change of subject, even for her. But she can only withstand so much.

Pascal snorts. “If only,” he says. “The civil war treatises prevent my guild from trading with either party.” He waggles a finger at her. “I have _you_ to thank for that, if you recall.”

Pascal’s guild is one of most valuable in Orlais. In times of civil war, such parties are to remain neutral to either side. After years of Orlesian merchants encouraging in-fighting in order to profit from continued bloodshed, the greatest of these guilds—the iron workers, silverite miners, gold smiths—are under oath and treaty to remove themselves from the proceedings. It is not perfect, but it is a reform long in the making, and one of Josephine’s earliest ventures. War parties can find other suppliers if they are so determined.

“True,” Josephine admits, “yet, my Inquisitor has been venturing high and low through the Dales.”

Pascal stiffens—he is not the actor he thinks he is—and then relaxes, adjusting his jacket. “A wasteland,” he declares.

“Indeed,” she says, “Gaspard’s soldiers, Celene’s soldiers, Freemen, elves—by all accounts, their bodies litter the place.”

"How unpleasant for the Inquisitor,” Pascal replies. “I’m afraid I must find the companion I came in with, my lady.”

“Of course,” Josephine stands up straight, her hands still clasped behind her back. “I only thought you might like to know what else we found.”

“Andraste only knows,” says Pascal.

“Dawnstone poniards,” says Josephine.

The silence freezes between them—Pascal inhales deeply, exhales slowly. He says nothing. Josephine blinks and turns to look out at the empress’ guests.

“My Inquisitor is a devout Andrastean,” she says idly, “and the Dales have seen such bloodshed neither side knows who is dead or alive. She has been collecting what she can from the bodies—letters, tokens, whatever she can find so they might be returned to their families.”

“Charitable.” Pascal rolls his eyes.

“She has found poniards,” Josephine goes on, “on every party.”

“Any peasant can make a dagger from dawnstone.”

Josephine taps her chin with a fingertip. “Each blade bears a mark near the hilt—well, that is generous. It looks as though someone tried to score the engraving away.” She shrugs. “It was done quickly. It shows.”

It is Pascal’s turn to say nothing, and Josephine flexes her shoulders a little. “Peace will be accorded tonight,” she says with a little sigh. “What a relief for the people. What will happen, I wonder, when these kinds of war crimes come to light?”

He snorts. “Dramatic,” he says. “The price will be minimal.”

Josephine nods in seeming agreement. “Marquis,” she mutters, “do you see Duchess Lefevre, just there by the stairs?”

He nods tersely. Josephine leans back against the wall. “Her daughter was killed in the Dales,” she explains, “taking down a league of Freemen torching a village. She supported Celene.” She tilts her head. “And there is Comte Bouvier—he lost his two sons supporting Gaspard. Some kind of skirmish at the Riverside Garrison. His wife passed this year from grief. A terrible business.”

“Precisely,” snaps Pascal. “ _Business._ All Orlais is business, from the craftsmen to the nobles twittering in the Winter Palace. This is all _fact._ ”

Josephine goes on as though she hasn’t heard. “The Louvains are here too—their head of house went down in the field trying to protect refugees as they fled to Ferelden,” she sighs, her hand to her cheek. “Lord duHasette’s oldest daughter died in the same siege—he has sworn vengeance upon the Freemen and all who support them.”

“Will you list tragedy till you run out of breath,” says Pascal, “or will you find a point?”

“I only think,” Josephine tells him, meeting his eyes with a level gaze, “that Gaspard and Celene have been touched so little, compared to all Orlais. I imagine they will be the least of anyone’s worries.”

That silence again as her words land, good as a blow. Pascal looks out at the dancers. “There is no proof,” he grumbles.

“I have a barrel of it,” Josephine admits. “Fifty-eight poniards and all, marked where they were found and in whose hand, if it was known.” She shakes her head. “A pity.”

“You are no blackmailer,” hisses Pascal. “You are no _snake_ to pursue such a thing.”

“I am for the Inquisition, my lord,” says Josephine, every inch steel. “I am for justice.”

Pascal gapes, his mouth open and closing like a fish out of water. “It will destroy everything,” he manages. 

Josephine looks back at the guests. “No,” she says. “There is still time.”

“Time?” he rasps.

“Time enough to leave the country.” Her voice is stone. “To sail across an ocean, perhaps.”

He hesitates, as though he doesn’t know which way to run first. He wants to  leave her with a quip that will sting and bite at her, but there is nothing to be said.

“Even in Orlais, treason is forgivable,” Josephine tells him. “But not when wandering hands play both sides of the board.”

She allows herself to relish his retreat for a moment, watching the raven feathers disappear around a corner. But only for a moment. She straightens, adjusting a glove and heading around the corner to find Yvette. 

 

~~~

 

Leliana finds her first. “Where have you been?” she asks, leading her through a different hall with high windows. “The Inquisitor is waiting.”

“Celene,” Josephine pauses for a long time. “And Pascal.”

Leliana raises an eyebrow. “I thought we were saving him,” she says, “for a more opportune time.”

Josephine just shakes her head, and Leliana’s eyebrow arches ever higher. They walk in silence for a few moments, and when they round a corner Leliana asks, “Was it worth it?”

“Of course.” Josephine’s answer flies out of her mouth before she registers the question. He is gone, people are safe, it was just. She does not give voice to the thought of Cullen, breathing easier in his corner of the world, giving her more relief than all the rest.

It is only because of the severity of his reaction, she tells herself. And how horrible Pascal had been. And because she had not stopped it from happening. That is all.

But it is Leliana. She can always tell. “I trust you,” she says, “though…well. It does not matter now.” She touches her arm, and Josephine is better for it.

“It is going rather well, all things considered,” Leliana continues, “because of your planning.”

“Well enough,” sighs Josephine.

“Truly,” Leliana says, and squeezes her arm. “I was just remembering a nineteen-year-old Josephine, whirling about these halls in gold and white, spilling parchment everywhere.”

That startles a laugh out of Josephine. “I’d forgotten,” she admits.

“I,” Leliana smirks, “will _never_ forget. And I will never let you forget.”

Josephine sighs wistfully. “I spilled red wine all over Duke de Chalons that night.”

“And all over yourself,” Leliana adds. “From gold and white to gold and pink.”

“It was my favorite dress.” Josephine smiles in spite of herself.

“It made for an incredible _rosé from Antiva_ joke.” Leliana’s lips curve up at the edges.

Josephine gives a mock-gasp. “I _knew_ it was you who started that,” she accuses. “Who knew it would take ten years to resolve the mystery?”

“Ah,” Leliana says, “I hoped that party I whisked you to afterwards might be a proper apology.”

“It was,” Josephine reassures. “That was the night I taught you the _capatio._ ” She pauses. “Well, the _first_ time I taught it to you.”

“The second time required less wine,” Leliana muses, “and more focus.”

The Inquisitor and Arram are waiting at the entrance to the ballroom. Josephine does not even have time to say _where is the commander_ before she sees it—he approaches, in step with _Yvette of all people_ , engaged in conversation. Unspeakable. Two ball-goers attempt to cut in and pull him away; Yvette quite literally shoos them away with her fan. The pang of affection that tugs at her heart pierces even the absolute horror at the sight of them talking.

“Cullen!” Trevelyan hurries him along with a gesture—with a powerfully pointed look from Josephine, Yvette glares and slinks back to her corner of the ballroom. Cullen joins them, a determined look in his eye—not knotted up in impossible tangles or strained to the bone with tension. He is fine, she tells herself. They are all well.

“I went to find you,” Cullen mutters by way of apology, “but—“

“I apologize for anything she said.” Josephine cuts him off with a strained mutter.

“Oh,” he says, “it was fine, it—“

Trevelyan cuts them off with a look, and she and Arram shoulder-in between them. “Florianne is scheming,” she says flatly. “I don’t know what, but there’s shadows afoot.” She looks at Leliana. “Tell them what you told me.”

Leliana crosses her arm. “We don’t have to save Celene,” she says. “We have the opportunity to make a change. There may be a better candidate.”

“ _May_ ,” Trevelyan says. “I need Orlais to hold together for a long while after this, because I don’t ever want to come back here.”

Arram and Cullen make twin noises of agreement under their breaths and Josephine crosses her arms.

“You want to let the assassins take Celene,” she says flatly.

“Celene _did_ lead Orlais to this point,” Cullen responds wryly. “How do we know she’s fit to lead on from here?”

“And who would you suggest?” Josephine asks, shoulders square. “You cannot possibly think Gaspard is qualified.”

“He is a military man and we are shoulder-deep in an impossible war,” he says.

“Briala,” Leliana chimes in, “would make a most remarkable choice as well, and would go a long way to righting the many wrongs in the blood of this country.”

Trevelyan rubs her temples. “Gaspard seems barely capable of pouring his own whiskey, let alone leading a country,” she says without preamble. “You haven’t talked to him, Cullen—if you do, I am sure you will find yourself in agreement.”

Josephine raises her palms. “Wait,” she pleads, “ _wait._ You cannot truly suggest we let Celene die. The future falls apart because of her assassination. Now you say we let it come to pass?”

“What if it’s the best thing we could do for Orlais? We must consider it.” Trevelyan grits her teeth.

“Think,” says Josephine, “on how it will reflect on us—the Inquisition, letting Venatori and minions of an Old God assassinate empresses because we felt it was a sound political decision.” She nearly wrings her hands. “We came to ensure peace, not topple regimes.”

“But we have a chance to set an example for the future,” Leliana states, and Trevelyan makes a soft sound of agreement.

“Briala has no experience,” says Josephine. “You would put an untrained Elven woman on the throne alone?”

“She knows herself, her people, and what must change for a better Orlais,” Trevelyan says thoughtfully.

“Out of the three, she gives me the most hope.”

“The war will never end,” says Josephine. “We will end this civil war to begin a new one between elves and men. Briala has no patience for the speed of change.”

“But we cannot let Orlais continue this course.” Leliana taps her foot.

“It is not sustainable.” Cullen agrees, looking at the guests that flit about with a hard gaze. “The tension between the classes, the mistreatment of the elves—the Inquisition should not stand for that, either.”

Trevelyan sighs deeply. “It is hopeless,” she says. “There is no move to make without us emerging unscathed.”

“No,” Josephine says suddenly, and she has to take Leliana’s arm, such is the force of her idea. “No. _No._ ” A wide grin spreads across her face.

Leliana raises an eyebrow. “Are you well?” she asks mildly.

Josephine resists the temptation to rub her palms together. “Together,” she says. “Bring them together. Briala and Celene.”

The silence that follows is not altogether unexpected, but all great ideas need a moment to breathe.

“You mean to say—” Cullen is the first to speak, and struggles with the wording. “They are…connected?”

“In love.” Josephine is certain of it. Divine providence must have fostered that meeting with Celene.

Trevelyan blinks. “Josephine,” she says, gently, “this seems like…a stretch, at best.”

“More than that.” Leliana’s eyebrows nearly disappear in her hairline. “They cannot stand to be in the same room.”

“Occasionally,” says Cullen, of all people, “that can be indicative of very little.”

Leliana stares at him as though he’s grown a second head, and Trevelyan sucks in a breath through her teeth. “It’s a romantic solution,” she allows, “but far-fetched.” 

“I spoke to Celene tonight,” Josephine says. “Trust in me, Inquisitor. There is a chance. A perfect chance, should we choose to take advantage of it.”

Trevelyan rubs her temples again. “The state of this country must supersede a happy ending, Josephine.” Her tone is gentle, as though she is trying to soften a blow.

 _That_ is out of line. “Do I not know that best, of all of us?” Josephine almost snaps, but keeps her tone even. “I know Briala. I know Celene. Neither is perfect—no one ever is. But I spent years keeping Orlais from falling apart. What have I done in my time with the Inquisition that makes you believe I would sacrifice the lives of the people to satisfy a happy ending?”

She takes a breath. “The right solution, no matter how hard. Celene will have a radical right hand, the right kind of balance to her patient nature. The movement to bring equality to Orlais will continue. We will not be ruled by the fist of a warlord. And we need not settle for anything less than _peace_.”

They fall silent. Perhaps she was too direct, but it has been a long night. She glances down at her gloves, letting the silence sit. She has led them this far, but this is a farther jump than anything yet. Her heart races, blood pumping in her ears. 

“Speak, Ambassador.” Cullen’s voice, soft and low and certain. It parts the heavy silence like sun through the clouds. Her eyes drift up from her hands and he is looking at her. “I believe we are yours.”

Trevelyan nods. “Tell me what you need,” she says, reaching for Josephine’s hands. “I can do it.”

Josephine inhales, dizzy with sudden relief. She pulls her out of the circle and into the hall, Arram in tow, muttering directions in her ear. She does not see it, but she can feel one of Leliana’s wry smiles at her back.

 

~~~

 

It takes no time at all. Josephine tells Trevelyan all the secrets she knows: where to find a letter, where to find a locket, who to talk to and in which order. Arram has impeccable memory and can repeat it all back to Josephine without a moment’s hesitation. She sends them off into the world, heart thudding, and makes her way back to Yvette.

Leliana and Cullen have taken up their careful places on the other side of the ballroom once more. Yvette rounds on her the moment she arrives, but she looks at Josephine’s face and sighs.

“You need to stay close to me,” Josephine says, and Yvette rolls her eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she replies, arms crossed, before she launches into a long treatise about her newest salon that she and their father have planned—yes, in the spring, Papa is going through another flowers phase again, and oh, his crocuses have never been so strong and there’s a rumor that one of the king’s mistresses _might_ just ask him for a commission, and that would please him so—

Josephine half-listens, surveying the crowd. The hour of action is nigh—if there is to be an attempt, it will be soon. Leliana is making conversation with the empress’ ladies-in-waiting, and Cullen is surrounded by admirers, all who are keeping a distance that goes some way towards satisfying her.

“What did you say to him?” she asks, interrupting Yvette’s prattle. It ruffles her feathers.

“Nothing worthwhile,” Yvette drawls. “He just wanted to know where you were. The Inquisitor was calling and you were off dawdling somewhere.”

“I wasn’t dawdling,” groans Josephine. “I was…taking care of some business.”

“Oh?” Yvette’s eyes narrow. Moments like these, Josephine is glad for Yvette’s love of the arts, for she could not afford to have an enemy who could read her so well at court. “Of course you were.”

Josephine’s nostrils flare. “Your commentary is unnecessary.”

“I only said as much as you did.” Yvette flaps the fan with an air of threat.

The bells toll, and Josephine rests her hands on the bannister. More guests flood in from every corner. Celene will be addressing the court, she is sure of it—and they will see if her plans have come to any kind of fruition.

They must. They _must._ It is the only worthwhile solution.

“There is the empress,” whispers Yvette, and they watch her emerge from her private balcony to stand above them all. She stands stock-still, hands clasped elegantly, waiting. Yvette touches Josephine’s hand. “Breathe,” she says.

Josephine inhales through her nose. The second bell clangs and the very walls echo with its music. A handful of heartbeats later, Trevelyan sweeps into the ballroom, inner circle in tow. Cullen breaks free of his admirers to join her, and they all traverse down the stairs. Cullen grips his sword; Josephine curls her fingers in turn around Yvette’s wrist.

“Stay close,” she commands quietly, and for once, Yvette does not argue.

The third bell sounds, and the ballroom doors close with a heavy thud. The resonance is all sorrow until Briala appears from the shadows behind to stand beside Celene. The relief of it is enough to make her heart palpitate.

Leliana is at the bannister too, her stance ready. Celene begins to speak, her voice sweeping over the crowd in sweet, loving tones. She names Briala as marquise, and is only halfway into her next sentence to declare a new Orlais when Josephine both spots a movement in the shadows behind the empress and sees Trevelyan sprint towards the staircase—and then everything splinters into screaming.

It’s all a rush, too quick to track: Corypheus’ agents dart from every corner, blades drawn and glinting in the candlelight. Josephine pulls Yvette behind the pillar and Manon appears from _nowhere_ , a red-haired shadow with a sword in each hand. “Get down,” she grunts.

Yvette is too shocked by the proceedings to even scream—Josephine yanks her to the floor and they huddle against the bannister. She watches carefully in case they need to run, though none of the agents get anywhere close to them—they are no match for Manon, who dispatches them quickly and efficiently. Yvette’s eyes press into her shoulder.

“It will be over in a moment,” she whispers into her hair, holding her tightly. She peers through the slats of the bannister, seeking the Inquisition—Leliana dances with her knives, taking an enemy down quickly before moving to another, cleaning out the upper dais before darting out onto the balcony with two Inquisition agents at her back. Another pair of soldiers ushers guests through the door into the great hall, their quaking feet and shrieking voices echoing off the walls. Where Celene once stood is empty—she must be fine, Josephine is sure of it. Florianne and the Inquisitor are nowhere in sight. And then—where is—

Her gaze snaps down to the center of the room, finds a red figure surrounded by whirling knives. Cullen fends against the enemy, alone. He is _so_ alone. Her fingers tighten, curling around Yvette’s shoulders. He keeps them back from the last of the crowd, the ones pinned in by the great exodus of the other guests, until their agents can motion them up and away.

Assassins move too quickly for knights, or so she’s always heard, but not Cullen. She has watched him fight, though only in the name of teaching—even his duels with Manon do not require this complete and unreserved agility. Every lunge and thrust sings with heavy, exacted strength. From shoulder to sword tip, he makes a perfect line of muscle, over and over again. His jaw clenches, taut with focus, and his sword whistles through the air. An agent drops—he swivels, unrelenting, in the span of a breath to face another.

A fire burns in him—it fuels the grim determination ever-present in his broad shoulders, the tightness in his spine going lithe and smooth as he parries a blow and rams the pommel into his enemy’s ribs. She knows this fire; she glimpses it in his defenses when they argue, in the grit and endurance that color his work.

Many months ago, Josephine might mistake it for a soldier’s weary duty—doing only what he knows how to do. A hammer driving nails, nothing more. But this is grace. This is a gift.  

Violence cripples the moment—even as they fall to the floor, the remainders creep too close, and knife slices through the air a hair away from his neck. A stone lodges in her throat, trapped by rising panic and she forgets to breathe, _oh, they are so close_. Her fingers dig into the fabric of Yvette’s gown— _please, please._  

He dispatches one in a flash of red; a knife flies from his hand and sinks into the last with a soft gasp.

Before his last enemy has even dropped to the ground he sprints across the floor and up the steps.

Leliana calls from the doors, voice clear and victorious. “We are clear, Commander,” she signals.

She hears Manon sheathe her swords, some fifteen paces away. “This side too.”

“ _Where is Josephine?_ ” Cullen’s voice is rougher than she’s ever heard it, rasping and out of breath.

She gropes for the bannister, hauling herself up with her sister in one arm. Yvette clings to her out of exhaustion, not fear—good.

“I am here,” Josephine says. “I am fine. I am here.”

The fire fades out of him in one deep heave of relief at her words—he is looking at her again, shoulders soothed with it, all the wind swept out of his sails. “I—I didn’t see you,” he says, quieter. “I thought—”

He shakes his head, wipes the sweat collecting on his brow. “Never mind what I thought.”

“I’m also well,” Yvette grumbles.

Josephine squeezes her arm. “Are you?” she asks gently.

“Yes.” She rubs at her face, pulling off her mask. “No.”

 

~~~

 

Josephine misses the near entirety of the victory speech finding Yvette’s guest room and putting her to bed, Manon in tow—her presence had been non-negotiable.

She helps Yvette change out of the corsets and the stays and the frippery, and Yvette is quiet, even as she slides into bed. Josephine tucks the sheets in around her.

“Did you know that might happen?” Yvette finally asks, looking up at the ceiling.

Josephine nods.

“And you didn’t tell me?” Yvette turns her head.

“I thought it would scare you,” Josephine answers. “And truth be told, I didn’t know how it would happen.”

She pulls the covers up to her nose. “I shouldn’t be afraid.”

“You’re nineteen,” sighs Josephine, “and you can be afraid of whatever you want. But nothing will hurt you, not tonight.” She kisses her forehead and blows out the candle next to the bed. “Sleep. I will find you in the morning before we go.”

Yvette closes her eyes, and Josephine goes to the door.

“Josie?”

Josephine pauses, her hand on the door’s latch. “Yes?”

Her voice is small. “Be safe.”

She thinks of Val Royeaux tomorrow, of all things—the bleak thoughts of her dead couriers and whatever the future might hold put on indefinite pause until Halamshiral was complete and the empress saved. Now it is done. The thought of meeting the comte on the morrow only leaves her tired.

“I will,” she promises, though she cannot. “I will.”

Manon walks shoulder-to-shoulder with her back to the ballroom, where she stands in the great doorway and listens to Trevelyan make impassioned pleas for all Orlais to put aside their grievances and stand with Thedas against Corypheus.

The people applaud and cheer, raising elegant hands and glasses of red wine. Her words ring true for even the most jaded of Orlesians. Trevelyan is so earnest—it is hard not to love her. The final victory of the night, a signature on a letter. Perfect.

Josephine slips away, around the corner and out onto a lonely balcony. The gardens below are quiet but for a few guests, and their talk makes pleasant murmurs, almost like crickets. The moon glows. All is silent, and it is a little like peace.

“Ambassador?” A voice at the doorway.

She turns her head, and there he stands, hands behind his back.

“You may have found the only quiet spot in the Winter Palace,” he begins, and rubs the back of his neck.

 Her mouth twitches. “Commander,” she accuses, “are you trying to find a hiding place?”

“Yes,” he admits. “With some urgency.”

She motions him in, and he comes to stand beside her at the railing. They stand in the quiet for a little while—and it is a little odd, perhaps, to just stand and not speak, but she needs it. Just for a moment. And Cullen seems no stranger to silence.

“Where is Florianne?” she finally asks, brows furrowed.

Cullen glances out at the garden. “No longer a problem,” he says.

“Pity,” Josephine exhales. “Perhaps she would have talked.”

“I don’t think so,” he admits, leaning on the bannister. “I got the impression from Trevelyan she would not let herself be taken alive.” He sighs. “Very dramatic.”

“Unsurprising, given the circumstances.”

“You mean her attempt to murder the empress of all Orlais in front of hundreds of people?” His tone is wry. “Or her scheme of ruling Thedas as an ancient darkspawn’s queen?”

“Either way,” Josephine says, “she ensured her own immortality. Tonight has all the makings of Orlesian legend.” She gives him a sideways look. “That includes you.”

He groans and runs a hand over his face. “Have mercy, Ambassador.”

“Does the Lion of Skyhold admit defeat?” Josephine cannot help but smile.

“I could go my whole life,” he says, “and never hear that name again, and be content.”

She clucks her tongue. “The Orlesians love their titles,” she tells him, “and they have given you an army. Rise above.”

“Is that part of the agreement?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Celene’s support ensures the chevaliers and all her royal soldiers,” Josephine affirms.

He sighs. “You must stop giving me armies. I lack the means for adequate repayment.”

“You will find a way.” The corner of Josephine’s mouth quirks up. “They do seem to fall into my lap.”

“For a pacifist,” he agrees, “you collect them at an astounding rate.”

“One must cultivate hobbies.”

“What else is there to do up in the mountains?” He crosses his arms, rolling his shoulders. “Maker, if I had a silver for every expression of concern about how far Skyhold is from civilization, and how little I must have to occupy myself, and how _cold_ and _lonely_ my bed must be—“

“Isn’t it?” Josephine quips, before realizing what she has said and promptly ignoring it. She tightens a button on her sleeve before continuing, “Your office remains the coldest part of Skyhold, including the summit of the mountain itself.”

He snorts. “Home is the Frostbacks,” he says. “Rise above.”

Josephine chuckles, and brushes dust from her jacket with a sigh. “I should find Trevelyan,” she says.

“Ah—yes, of course,” he replies. “I believe I saw her with Varric in the vest—“

He stops talking at the sound of approaching footsteps, of soft-slippered feet on the stone floor, shrieks of barely contained laughter. Josephine glances at the entryway and hears, in breathless, affected Orlesian, _oh! I have found him, he is here_ , and realizes Cullen’s crowd of admirers has caught up to him to spirit him away and to wrestle him, by all means necessary, to the ballroom floor. At least ten, if her estimation of the fevered breathing is accurate.

His face pales even more, if that is possible, and he glances at her in a resigned kind of panic at being caught, and before the thought can even completely finish itself, she finds her hands outstretched to him. It is not truly possible for a pair to have the same thought at the same time, but their harmony is close enough—in the span of a breath, he takes her hands, she pulls him to her, and they are dancing.

 _Dancing_ , of course, is generous. He knows enough to lift her arm and to rest his hand against her hip—well, only his fingertips for now—and his head drops to watch their feet. Andraste preserve her, he is shy. 

“Look up at me,” she whispers. When he does not, she hisses, “ _Commander._ ”

“I don’t know what we’re doing,” he whispers back.

She tugs him gently. “Then let me lead.” And he does.

It’s not even a _dance_ —just a one-two step, the equivalent of learning to walk. Slow, simple, rhythmic. He does not look her in the eyes, at first, choosing to look just over the top of her head. She will bear it—he is nervous, and the whispers at the door have not gone away.

They will. No one has cut in on Josephine in nearly a decade.

It takes a few moments before she can feel him relax under her fingers, before they fall into a pattern, lulling and slow. One, two. One, two. One, two. His hand slides to curve around her hip properly. 

She moves them in a slow circle around the balcony. There is only time, now, and them. He exhales slowly.

“You’re not horrible at this,” is the first thing she says, and then she flushes.

But it cracks the silence, the tension. The corner of his mouth quirks, despite himself—she is close enough to see how his smile wrinkles the scar at his lip. “I—well. I’ve spent most of my life trying to be aware of where my feet are,” he offers.

“Then perhaps you have hidden potential.”

“Maker, no,” he mutters under his breath.

“Too late,” she says. “You are dancing.”

He drops his gaze and finally, finally looks her in the eye. “Is it dancing,” he asks, “if I’m only using you as a human shield?”

That makes her laugh. “Regardless of motive,” she tells him, “here we are.”

A breath of silence. Then he ventures, “I was—surprised, tonight. Not to see you dancing.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“It brings you joy,” he says with disarming simplicity. “Opportunities for it are rare enough at Skyhold.”

It is her turn to flick her eyes away. “It does,” she admits. “You cannot spin and remain morose at the same time. There was just too much, tonight,” she says, finally. “With Celene, and Yvette…” _And Pascal, and the comte tomorrow._ “I am dancing now.” She shrugs her shoulders.

Cullen huffs a breath, shakes his head. “I do not count.”

Josephine rises up on the tips of her toes, slipping out of his grasp and raising his arm. Despite the difference of height between them, she spins him, just once—just enough. She comes back to her heels, and his broad hand comes back to her hip.

“There,” she says. “Now it counts.”

He ducks his head—he is _blushing_ —and the sight of it makes her want to squeeze the hand that holds hers. She pretends not to notice, and their slow revolutions continue. The whispers have faded, but what does that matter now?

“Yvette—” he begins, and Josephine already splutters.

“Do not listen to a thing she says,” she warns him.

His eyes crinkle at the edges. “She was telling me,” he says lightly, “a story about you. And a cliff.”

Josephine’s eyes widen. “How much did she say?”

“She said you were ten,” Cullen recalls, “and that it was her favorite story about you.”

“Yvette was a _babe,_ ” grumbles Josephine. “She has no idea.” Cullen is squinting at her. “I am _not_ telling you.”

“I should like to know how it ends,” he says casually.

“Become acquainted with disappointment.”

“If that is your way,” he continues, “she told me she would write.”

Josephine grinds her teeth.

“My father’s sister,” she begins, “sailed a little fishing vessel. Nothing even remotely exciting. But I was ten, and—my brother and I fell in love with it. We were constantly competing over who would be the better sailor.” She rolls her eyes. “It came to the point where he dared me to stow away on her ship. I accepted with relish—but I, ah, overslept, and by morning, the ship was sailing away.”

Cullen raises an eyebrow.

“There is a cliff,” Josephine continues, “just past my house that looks over the bay. I climbed out of my window and hurtled myself off it without a second thought.” He blinks at her. “I don’t know. I was ten. I probably should have broken every bone in my body, but I swam to the ship instead.” She pauses. “As I, ah, tried to find a way to sneak onboard, my foot got caught in one of their nets, so when they hoisted it up…” Josephine remembers her aunt gaping as she dangled from the net by one foot, little arms crossed and hair dripping sea water everywhere. She grins a little. “But I won,” she says.

Cullen snorts. “You won,” he agrees.

“My brother,” Josephine admits, “called me _Josefish_ for a year.”

He laughs outright, that same rusty and low sound, kind and quiet. “You survived.”

“I did,” she says.

“I’m glad,” he says.

They fall into quiet. The pattern of their dancing takes up its own space in their conversation. It is strange to be so near him unarmored. She has never seen him so, and without it he feels closer, more human. His hands are so careful—they touch her so precisely. The one resting on the curve of her hip does not grip or merely _lay_ , but holds her. She does not have to tell him how. He simply knows.

And they feel like _him_ , despite the gloves. She finds herself wishing, idly, that neither wore them. _Stop_ , _Josephine_ , she tells herself. _Stop._

He breaks the silence, his voice low. “May I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” she replies, looking up at him.

“Do you miss this?” He glances at the finery around them. “Orlais, the Winter Palace, dealings with the Empress.”

She considers it. “Yes,” she says. A long pause follows, and so does the shadow that has followed her all night. In the quiet of the balcony, with him (of all people), she can speak it. “No.”

He tilts his head, and she parses her thoughts. “I love Orlais,” she admits. “The detail. The history. Their determination to celebrate life even in the worst struggle. And the Game—it is a very test of my limits, to play with the highest stakes. It is everything I ever wanted.”

He waits, as though all they have is time for her to divine her thoughts. She looks away, somewhere past their clasped hands. “It never changed,” she says, so quietly it is almost a whisper.

“I tried,” she continues, and then has to stop. Their feet move in tandem, the leisurely circle of their dance as soothing as waves. The stillness feels safe to her very bones. For a moment, she is reminded of home. “I dreamed of reforming this place,” she finally says, shaking her head. “We made changes, yes—treaties or new laws, fairer trade agreements—when I realized that was what I wanted, I made it happen. Nights like tonight…”

She still stares past their hands, unwilling to look up. “I am reminded how the Game can never truly change. How much suffering is caused by those completed protected from the consequences. How lives are toyed with.” The truth twists the air in her lungs. “I simply was not enough,” she confesses. “That is all.”

He does not speak, and the silence hangs bleakly between them.

Cullen lets go of her hip, slides her hand from his shoulder. He raises her arm—she does not move, blinking and frozen, until he is leading her and she turns, step by step, in slow revolution. When she finishes the circle, her eyes meet his for a heartbeat and he turns her again, and she goes up on her toes, and then again, a little faster, and _again_ , and he is not stopping, and they turn and turn across the stone balcony, a miracle with every step.

She is sure every turn is the last until it does not end, and she spins and spins under the bow of his arm. He turns her until Josephine cannot breathe for soft, wheezing laughter and her wobbling feet, and they must stop.

“I would ask your forgiveness,” he says, shaking out his arm, “but—well.” Josephine is bent double. When she comes up, he offers her a hand. His eyes smile, warm and whole.

She could wave it away—they could laugh, return to the ballroom, find their companions. It would only take a step. It would be over, and life would go on.

Josephine takes his hand instead, and they fall back into the dance easy as breathing—she leads, lifting her hand from his shoulder to tuck loosened strands of hair behind her ear.

She murmurs, “You are a fool,” and shakes her head. She cannot stop the edges of her mouth from curving upward.

His eyes crinkle, and as the quiet settles between them, he finds her gaze. “You are enough,” he says.

The twist of Josephine’s heart chokes her, and she must drop her eyes and look away. Her hand, resting on his shoulder, clenches without her meaning to—just one, hard pulse, echoing the snap in her chest. He lets her, until her hand can ease.

“Perhaps,” he continues, voice quiet, “it is this place that is unworthy. Not you.” They step. One, two. One, two. “You deserve better."

When she can finally raise her head again, he is waiting for her, that soft look on his face that feels like a sigh against her cheek. _Stop, Josephine_ , she tells herself, but the voice is weak. She should part from him, bow and say goodnight. She does not. She cannot, not tonight.

Tonight, there is just this: the solitude of the darkness, the glow from the lanterns and the moon, and the hazy peace of danger vanquished until the morrow. Above and below, the universe moves, but here, together, they turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all your patience as I churned this giant chapter out, and for your ever-marvelous and whale-noise-inducing feedback.  
> tumblr: klickitats


	11. the door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen struggles to discern where he and Josephine stand after the events of the Winter Palace.
> 
> Mighty thanks go to sunspeared for her beta-ing prowess and patience in answering all my questions.

The blade whistles above Cullen’s head, close enough to take a hair or two for a prize. Cassandra dazzles with sword and shield— _brightly_ is the only word he can fathom to describe it, fearsome and light. Their heavy symmetry never fails to stun him: it is so apparent that Cassandra was trained to be the sword-arm of the Chantry, and he the shield. No matter how long they are orphaned from its service, their movements will forever bear the scars of it.

It makes them a well-matched sparring pair—Cassandra beats him nearly every time, but at least he makes her work for it.

The sun barely breaches the horizon; Skyhold sleeps. Their grunts of effort and swordplay only just disturb the cold morning air. Cassandra snarls and lunges toward him again in the span of half a breath. Only action matters here, and instinct yanks him from the mire of his own thoughts.  

Today, his arms prove too heavy, too slow. She marks him high on his bicep on accident—not deep, but red blooms on the dull linen of his shirt all the same. “You are distracted,” she snaps. She smacks the flat of her blade to her shield. “Wake, Cullen.”

He paws the sweat from his brow and ignores the wound. She is correct, of course. His brain lingers on the dream that shook him from sleep when the moon was still high: hills of red graves, blistering the ground like boils. Names he knows. Hot breath on his skin. Teeth in his neck. A voice, raw silk constricting his spine and charring against his bone where it rubs, a feeling somewhere between lyrium and the void. _**You** live? _ it screeches and whispers, a tongue of flame, and then laughs, long and high: _Why you? Why you?_ Everything burned.

He woke with a start and—every muscle in his body froze, every bone locked. Stiff and still as plank of wood, as a corpse. Not even his eyes could dart to the wide hole in his ceiling, where he so often watched the sky and waited for sleep. The moon and stars glimmered down on him, peaceful and inattentive, if they were there at all. And that voice continued, unstoppable: _nothing matters. These hands, murder. This mind, foul. This heart, bile._

It happens, sometimes. The healers call it _a visit from the night hag_. Dorian rolls his eyes and calls it _sleep paralysis, nothing so dramatic._ He nearly pissed himself, the first time—Haven, a bitter and dark morning in his tent, alone, before he even had a room to call his own. He thought he was dying, dead. (And somewhere underneath lived relief, too—just a breath of it.)

This morning, it eased out of him slow, a thaw. Sometimes it is quick, or takes a long while, but it fades.

All in all, good reason to find Cassandra in the little hours, to pace outside the chapel until she is done praying, and to attempt to reverse the utter wreck of the morning. She had listened carefully, examined his eyes, and dragged him to the courtyard without a word.

Three days back from Halamshiral. His body has not yet forgiven him for the stress, and will not for a long while. He said none of that to Cassandra, but by now, they both know the pattern by heart. So into the low valley he goes, and he shall not fear the legion. Either that, or he will say the words until they be true.

“Come _on_ ,” Cassandra snarls.

 _I can move_ , Cullen thinks. It is a prayer. _I can move._

~~~

Half an hour later, Cassandra finishes running the rough towel over her face and neck before tossing it to him. “Your head was somewhere else today,” she lectures. Expectation in the face of adversity is what he needs, has always needed—not coddling. A shove instead of a touch.

And it was a sound beating. His muscles sing. “All of me,” he corrects, “is right here. Thank you for the match.”

She snorts, digging for the waterskin in their pile of shed armor. “Too much dancing at the palace,” she mutters. “I think you left your wits in Orlais.”  

Cullen pauses for a half second before rubbing the towel behind his neck. “How…” he begins, then cuts himself off. “ _Varric._ ”

“You couldn’t pay that dwarf to stop talking to me.” Cassandra rolls her eyes. “I’ve tried.” She takes a long pull from the waterskin before handing it over.

He takes it and chooses to drink, rather than retort. Cassandra stretches, cracks her neck. He stares at the waterskin in his hands for a moment before opening his mouth, and closing it again.

After all, he has little idea of what to say about it, other than yes, it happened. It happened.

But Cassandra is all too glad to pick up the gauntlet at his expense. “Nothing to say?” Cassandra deposits herself on the hard ground beside their armor and gear, stretching a leg. “What a shock.”

“There’s nothing _to_ say.” He rolls his shoulder.

“She must be a lackluster dancing partner, then.”

“That will not work,” he says, ignoring his own bristling.

“What am I supposed to think?” She eyes him. “All Varric would say is you and the ambassador danced for half the night.”

“You _have_ been talking to him too often if you can’t spot one of his embellishments.” Cullen rolls his eyes and takes another pull before handing it back.

“Leliana has not yet returned,” Cassandra says, “and he does have a gift for detail.”

“Why not just ask me?” Cullen grinds his teeth.

“Your reports are dry on the best of days,” she informs him. “I was sparing myself disappointment.”

“What is there to say? It was bloody,” he says, all stiffness, “but fine. Have I sung to your approval?”

“Stupid,” she mutters. “ _Stupid._ ” He thinks she might stand and demand another sparring match. He would welcome it, and a hundred more marks from her sword on the flesh of his arm rather than continue this course and its inevitable destination.

“I do not disagree,” he tells her. “Let us move on.”

She glares at him, and then gestures to the ground beside her. “Sit,” she says. He stares at her, but when she furrows her brow he finds himself beside her, leaning back on his hands. The courtyard is empty, yet, but for a servant or two passing by. It will do little harm to delay.

“Varric said it was a miracle,” Cassandra begins, “that we lost no agents.”

“Somewhat,” he agrees. “The Inquisitor and her company took the brunt of it, of course. A troupe of Venatori, a rift opening in the servants’ quarters.” He waves his hand. “Nothing unusual.”

“And the assassins themselves?” She raises an eyebrow.

Cullen nods. “We dispatched them,” he says, reaching over to snag the waterskin again, “as the Inquisitor dispatched the duchess. One of Leliana’s agents was in bad shape after being cornered, but he lives.”

“And Celene rules,” Cassandra reflects, “with an elven marquise at her side.” She shakes her head. “I never thought I would see it.”

“There is an elven bann in Denerim.” He shrugs. “And that was a long time before the end of the world.”

“Still,” she says, “in Orlais, of all places.”

“It was Josephine’s idea,” Cullen adds, for credit is due where it is due.

Cassandra’s look is quick and sharp, and he is certain he has damned himself in some way without knowing it. “And you agreed to it?”

“Of course.” Cullen blinks. “It made the most sense.”

She shakes her head, going back to her shield.

“What?” he sighs. “Do not begin to curb your words _now._ ”

“If Celene managed to retain the throne, I thought it would be because she was the only one left alive,” Cassandra admits. “Knowing you—and Leliana. And your methods.”

“It happened the way it happened.”

Cassandra scowls and changes subject like a sword being tossed from hand to hand. “And you,” she continues, “were quite…popular.”

He runs a hand over his face. “Please,” he says. “Let’s not speak of it.”

“Suitors,” Cassandra continues as though she hasn’t heard, “ _suitors._ Varric said there were four marriage proposals.”

“Five,” Cullen corrects automatically.

Cassandra arches an eyebrow. “Perhaps we can use that.”

“Leliana already alluded to the possibility,” he counters instantly, “and I will not be bartered like a noble’s daughter on behalf of the Inquisition.”

“Not _bartered_ ,” snorts Cassandra. “But dangled. They have plans for you.”

He shudders. “I am unwilling,” is all he says.

She looks thoughtful. “But they may have rescinded their invitations, knowing you danced with our lady ambassador till the dawn rose.”

“Hardly.” He will not rise to the bait.

“You were not in full view of the Orlesian court?” she asks, looking more suspicious by the moment. She reaches for her shield and her cleaning rag. “You were not ‘transported to somewhere between heaven and earth?’”

“Cassandra,” he grits through his teeth, crossing his arms over his chest. “I was besieged by onlookers from the ball, and for a moment, she provided a diversion when they conspired to take me to the floor.”

He swallows. “It was—mere kindness. Nothing more.”

She stares at him before going back to the maintenance of her shield, and he leans back on his hands with a sigh. Quiet passes between them until Cassandra picks up her sword and the whetstone instead, drawing it along the metal until it sings.

“Did you like it?” she finally asks between passes.

Cullen stares at her. “Did I like _the ball?_ ”

“No, you idiot,” she snaps, “Did you like dancing with her?”

He is ready to groan _of course not_ but finds his mouth, despite its usual clumsiness, will not form the words. He sits forward instead, looks at his hands when they rest on his knees.

Their hands had slotted together just so. Hers were not small. She had long, precise fingers— capable, like a musician’s. And so _sure._ He feared to touch her when she pulled them into their simple two-step, all at odds and fumbling and unsure where to place his eyes, let alone his feet. But a few minutes into following her lead, and suddenly it was like breathing, like falling asleep.

“Cullen?” Cassandra’s voice has dropped its exasperated humor, fading into rare hesitancy instead. His heart clenches hard, an instinctive fist. He knows the way she asks this, knows that on the other side of this word, and the way she says it, lies _change._ And he does not know what—only that he is unready.

But he cannot lie, not for this. It would soil this tiny, precious light he has found, and carried for days like a stone in his pocket. So he nods.

A look passes over Cassandra’s face, and her eyes soften, just a little. Sympathy, perhaps, or sorrow—or both. She goes back to sharpening her sword, and no more conversation passes between them until Cullen gathers his things and heads back to his tower.

~~~

Six days back at Skyhold, and when seven o’clock bell rings Cullen pauses in his letter, rubs at a twinge in his shoulder from sparring. They need another company in the west, as everyday a new and strange torment invents itself to plague his captain, at least as Rylen tells it. Noxious pits of gas. Dragonlings. A particular kind of desert rashvine that somehow finds a generous home inside soldiers’ sweaty boots.

He stands, thighs protesting, though the ache at his temples has faded a little since the morning. But he can engage tonight—he must.

He goes to the corner of the room, as has been rote for months now, and slides his fingers around the back of the rosewood chair. He hefts it into the air before he realizes there is no need.

It is over. The thought makes his stomach drop, which he immediately accredits to the lyrium: after all, this should be relief. No more twittering over six different kinds of nobility, pages of endless notes and maps, no more bowing and hand-raising and quiet laughter over his latest mistake. No more talk of military regalia, proper ways to refuse a dance, or patiently murmured words in Orlesian—the train of thought is both intolerable and without purpose and must be stopped.

He places the chair back down so gently it makes no sound against the stone. And then he looks at his office, which seems too small and too big all at once, and resoundingly empty.

Why does everything keep coming back to this? Why is he trapped in, in _useless orbit_ with no way forward?

Cullen rubs his temples and finds his way out to the battlements. Lungfuls of cold night air, clear and bracing, make for an imitation of peace until an unmistakable voice hollers from the stairs behind him.

“Curly.” It’s Varric. Perhaps if Cullen stands very still, he will not notice him. “Curly. _Curly._ ”

He turns his head, and Varric has made it to the top of the battlements. “Come on,” he says. He will not entertain any of Cullen’s protests, and he finds himself slowly going down the steps to the courtyard.

“What’s eating you?” is the first thing Varric says once Cullen makes his way down.

“Nothing,” he replies, rubbing the back of his neck.

Varric snorts and heads towards the tavern. “You look like shit. I’m buying you an ale,” he calls over his shoulder. It is not an offer, but a command, and Cullen follows.

It’s not the most bustling night at the Herald’s Rest—Bull and the Chargers are still out at the Storm Coast with the Grey Wardens, and Dorian is in Val Royeaux with the Inquisitor and Josephine. But Maryden still plucks and sings, and enough people have ale in their hands to make the place feel full.

Varric pushes a tankard of ale his way at the bar and raises his own from atop a stool. “To home,” he says, “wherever the hell that is.”

Cullen nods, raises, drinks. The ale leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, cheap and familiar.

“One day,” Varric says, “we’ll live somewhere the swill isn’t pig piss.”

Cullen snorts. “Supply the bar with Orlesian ale instead,” he says.

“Stupid investment.” Varric rolls his eyes. “None of you would drink it.”

“I don’t know,” Cullen replies, fidgeting with the handle of the mug. “Dorian made me try some kind of wine with bits of lavender in it. It was supposed to taste like _joy._ ” He wrinkles his nose.  

Varric stares at him before fingering his chin. “…And it was shit, right?”

“I didn’t swallow it,” Cullen agrees. “But he doesn’t know that.”

Varric snorts into his tankard. “Doing your country proud, Curly. What do you reckon the Orlesians would call this?” He squints into the depths of the ale.

Cullen takes a long drink. It will only worsen his headache in the long run, but at this point, there’s little reason to care. “You’re the writer,” he deflects.

Varric grunts his agreement yet offers nothing, and they sit and drink in the quiet. They both know what it tastes like. The barkeep refills both their mugs after a while, and Maryden raises her soft, lilting voice and sings. Within the first few bars he knows it is _Andraste’s Mabari_ , and every fiber of his body goes taut as he listens.

Varric hums along—it’s a rowdier tavern song, even though Maryden’s style makes it more of a ballad than anything else. Of course he knows it.

Templar recruits were not permitted to sing much of anything other than the chant and other hymns at Kinloch, but there was nothing better than the sounds of all his fellows tromping back inside after a long day’s worth of sparring and smiting outdoors, voices raised in exhaustion. It was allowed them, and it was his favorite. His timbre changed before the rest of him did—for a year he was the scrawny templar with the big voice.

 _Oy, bit Fereldan._ Maker, how many years has it been since that nickname crossed his mind? From Haim, his first knight-captain. Cullen was the only one he ever gifted a nickname. _The bit Fereldan should raise ‘is shield if he don’t want to be demon grub. Sit, bit, before you fall down. Spot of chess, bit Fereldan?_

He cannot hear this song without the rhythm of plated boots marching in time behind it. He taps his fingers on the bar, the silent beat of another life.

_Oh that dog, he guards Andraste_

_Without arrogance or fear,_

_Only asking of his mistress_

_Just a scratch behind the ears_

He’d grown up with a mabari, a runty, sweet pup Mia named Triss, and at fourteen, missed that dog more than anyone else back at Honnleath. He thinks of Rory, at the kennels. Loghain has whelped her pups by now, to be sure, and he owes them all a visit. He has not been able to spare an hour for a handful of weeks now, but vows to make time.

Varric elbows him, and he almost spills his drink. “Get out of your head,” he says, not unkindly. “Isn’t this the song of your country, or something?”

It does not make him homesick—Cullen has not had a home for more than a decade. Skyhold is growing to take its place, but that will take time. Even Haven, with all its similarity to Honnleath, felt little like the place he was _supposed_ to be, as much as it was a new place to learn to endure.

When Maryden finishes, a smattering of applause goes up around the tavern. Varric elbows him again.

“Clap,” he commands. “I’m sure she sang it for the Lion of Skyhold.”

“Why?” Cullen asks, even as he raises his hands and does so.

“You’re the commander, you almost _never_ come here.” Varric shrugs. “Good will, I think, and maybe a coin for that hat at her feet.”

“No songs for you?” Cullen inquires.

“The song of Kirkwall,” Varric reflects with a grand gesture, “is between the sound of a drunk pissing up against the wall of the Hanged Man, that particular clinking noise when you have a bunch of sovereigns in a dirty bag, and somebody screaming in the next alley over.”

Cullen taps his mug with his own at that, and takes a drink. “You should write one,” he says. “Kirkwall needs an anthem.”

“The effort it would take,” Varric says, with the fondness of a father talking about a troubled child, “might kill me.”

“The _laziness_ of Kirkwallers,” Cullen cannot help but snigger. “It’s not like you have anything else to do.”

“Not a fucking thing,” says Varric, triumphant, and finishes his mug.

“Other,” Cullen adds, an eyebrow raised, “than writing the Seeker _books._ ”

“Just the one,” corrects Varric, and Cullen snorts.

“ _Just the one_ ,” he mimics. He jabs a finger into his arm. “Write another,” he says, sensing an opening, “and stop— _stop_ —using me as an excuse to talk to Cassandra.”

“I’m not,” Varric protests. He even bats his eyelashes.

Cullen gives him a dark look, unfazed. “You _are_.” He takes a drink. “Not only that, but you resort to gossip. Completely intolerable.”

“Is it gossip?” Varric’s eyes crinkle in suspicion.

“ _Yes_ ,” Cullen grits out. “None of what you say is true. None of this…dancing till sunrise nonsense.” He looks at the bottom of his mug. “An hour at most.”

“I never gossip. It was _more_ than an hour,” Varric says, the picture of innocence. “I was just…reminiscing. On the past.” The barkeep refills him. “Don’t you remember?”

“Be plain, please.” Cullen rolls his eyes.

“I remember,” says Varric, “the snapping and the shit-kicking. The never-ending bickering.”

“You weren’t even there _._ "

“No,” he admits, “but Curly, she told me about it. _Everyone_ was talking about it.”

Cullen’s ears burn a hot, shameful red. Of course they were, and of course they knew, and of course _he knew_ that they knew. No one keeps secrets at Skyhold. Each gritted out word and sneer is heard by lingering runners outside doors, by servants and aides with ears pressed to holes in the walls.

“All that shit,” says Varric, and it takes Cullen a moment to realize his tone isn’t disapproving, or angry, or even irritated. He sounds half in awe. “All that _shit_ , and what, now you’re dancing at the palace?” He shakes his head, takes a pull of ale. “Andraste wept.”

Cullen doesn’t say anything, just watches as Varric leans over the counter and refills both their mugs.

“Unending vexation,” he tries. He doesn’t say _it used to hurt._ “Like picking at a wound.”

“Yeah?” Varric prods. “And?”

“I don’t know,” Cullen says, defeated. “Everything with her was difficult, until it wasn’t.”

~~~

Nine days back at Skyhold, and the Inquisitor and her party return. Cullen talks with Manon in the courtyard on his way down to the camp, going over the exercises that need to be done for the week with the new recruits while he trains a evaluates a brace of new squad captains from the Orlesian army.

They ride in, a flurry of dirt and commotion from the road. Relief sweetens him through to the bone—why, he cannot say, as the ride from Val Royeaux is hardly perilous. He does not see Leliana, though there is Trevelyan and Arram, and Dorian at the back—and Josephine, on her white mount with brown stockings.

Everyone seems in a hurry, especially her, but her horse is too jumpy for a dismount—and then he is in the crowd, sliding his fingers into the bridle and holding the mare steady as she gets down, feet touching the ground in a soft puff of dust.

“Oh, thank you,” Josephine says, running a hand over her face and only smearing a line of dirt more broadly across her cheek. Her hair is wild from the road, half out of its coif, a soft, dark and tangled mess. “She doesn’t like to rush.” She pats the horse’s flank.

“Why the haste?” he inquires.

“We passed a dignitary from Nevarra on the road,” she says, fingering the bridge of her nose. “He was supposed to be here in two weeks, but he will be here by dinner instead. Leliana stayed behind to accompany him.”

“Shall I bar the gates?” He is only half joking. “Surely you deserve an hour’s peace.”

“Idleness breeds wickedness,” Josephine says, “and it is time for negotiations.” Between Nevarra and Tevinter, he remembers. He did not expect them to begin so quickly.

She glances down and seems to finally witness the state of herself. “Why,” she laments, “does this always happen?” She looks over at their companions, all of whom are ruffled yet not _quite_ so disheveled and covered in dirt.

“A true talent,” Cullen offers. He cannot help the grin beginning at the corner of his lips. “The rare opportunity to live as a dust storm.”

Josephine makes a noise as close to a snort as she ever comes. “Painfully unfunny, Commander.”

“Of course,” he agrees. “Although I should ask if there is any road _left_ , so I might send soldiers to mend it.”

“You laugh,” Josephine says, “but this will take the work of hours. I am a wreck.” Her sigh is gentle, flecked with weariness.

It pinches at his heart. “Nonsense,” Cullen says, because it is. “Just wash your face.” Without thinking, he reaches the small distance between them and tucks a lock of her untamed hair behind her ear. He freezes—oh, Maker, too familiar, _too familiar_ —but she ducks her head instead. The smile she tries to hide erases all the tiredness from her face.

It pushes his heart to pounding, though he stands still as stone. A new smile, from her: small and sincere and a little shy. _Bashful_ is the word, if words can manage description. She runs her gloved fingers through her hair, attempting to right the mess but finding a little success. What would it look like down, he wonders, undone and piled on her shoulders.

“I will do so,” she says, and he refocuses, “provided I find the time.”

“Then I will not keep you,” Cullen says, taking the reins of her horse in hand. “Luck, Ambassador, if you should need it.”

She takes the saddlebag from her mount and pulls it over her shoulder. “Ah,” she says, “I do not feel kept. Thank you.”

He ignores the instantaneous heat up his spine and tugs at the reins of her horse. He thinks he smiles at her, or nods his head, or both, but they are not four steps apart before he stops her again.

“Wait.” He pauses, trying to find the right euphemism. “Your business, in Val Royeaux.” The dagger she was sent is in the top drawer of his desk, still. He cannot look at it long without slamming the drawer shut.

“All is well,” she says, nodding. But her smile fades. “All is well.”

A struggle, then, though a victory. Relief ripples through him again, thick enough to catch the breath in his throat. Yet he will stall her no longer. He places his hand over his breast in salute, she nods, and he takes her horse back to the stables.

~~~

Two weeks flash past before he can count them—Trevelyan is gone again within a day to the Exalted Plains with Solas on a new and emergent crisis, and though she takes Cassandra with her, Dorian provides several duels of morning chess. It lacks true vigor, but he appreciates the distraction and the company either way.

Dorian never bothers him about Halamshiral, but gives Cullen long, pitiful looks when he thinks he’s distracted. A puzzling turn—Dorian has never hesitated to speak his mind with Cullen, not even once, and he was a good a witness as anyone as to the events of the Winter Palace. It occurs to Cullen that they must be on equal footing. Dorian does not know how to talk about these… sorts of things either. Changes between people. It comforts him, oddly enough. He is not alone in his hesitation and unease.

So Cullen distracts in turn by tangling him in a two hour debate about Tevinter’s military actions on the coast of Seheron the next time he catches him. Dorian enjoys prattling about Ferelden’s many defeats at the hands of Orlais during the rebellion, and soon the pitiful looks entirely disappear. Or Dorian becomes more skillful at hiding them.  

He only sees Josephine twice, both times in passing negotiations with the Nevarran dignitary. He is obviously Moritalitasi, a head taller than she, wrapped in black robes, sporting a mustache twice as curled as Dorian's. Tiny bird skulls edge the lining of his coat sleeves. The fastenings at his waist and back look suspiciously like femurs. His face is solemn as the grave, almost caricature. He never says a thing. Josephine merely guides and speaks in soft tones.

With him, she dresses more conservatively than is her usual wont—a deep, dark blue dress that goes down to her feet, ruffles smoothed into slender sleeves, the only gold her ever-present necklace resting on her collarbones. Her hands are clasped in front of her, elbows tucked in, shoulders all steel under the silk. Another kind of dancing, almost, this strictness of posture. Just as precise.

Three times (more, admittedly—but, yes, three), he ponders going to her office, knocking on the heavy wooden door, and asking how it goes. Under the guise of work, or friendship, or both. To inquire about the stiff tiredness in her shoulders, or how the negotiations fare. Once, he makes it all the way outside, cold stars leering at him from the sky, before he turns back. He will not bother her. After all, what can he offer?

But he cannot account for fate. Two weeks, then, almost two weeks to the day, fate moves Cullen.

On a clear, temperate evening, just as the sun has set behind the mountains, a runner bursts into his office with a ragged missive from the Storm Coast, and a note from Trevelyan that says simply _War table. Sunrise._ She had only returned the day before. In a matter of moments he is opening the letter, out on the bailey, in Skyhold’s great hall, and at her door.

Before he can knock, the door opens—Calla stands there, blinking at him in surprise.

“Ser?” She cocks her head, raising a very suspicious eyebrow, eyes glancing over him head to toe.

"May I enter?" he asks, raising the missive in his hand. “I’ve a message for the ambassador.”

"Please do," Calla replies, so quick to answer she nearly interrupts him. When she slides past, he can feel her look over her shoulder at his back. How strange.

The candles in Josephine’s office burn low. Her dress is indigo today, nearly black, with structured shoulders, a high collar. In the soft flickers of the fire she looks wrapped in shadow. She finishes a sentence with a dot of her quill, and looks up. The dark effect mitigates as the corners of her lips curve toward heaven. “Commander,” she says, voice warm, “to what do I owe your visit?”

Cullen could say it: the Grey Wardens, while rather efficient at dispatching darkspawn and mending the passageways they make from the deep at the Storm Coast, have murdered a noble’s mercenary company in the meantime. The _entire_ company.

Instead, he only rubs the back of his neck and crosses to her desk. “Do you have some time?”

“The Nevarran has not only gone to bed, but leaves in the morning.” She folds her hands on her desk. “I have _endless_ time. But you do not look pleased," she continues, tilting her head. To her credit, it only takes her a moment to realize why he must be here. Then her face darkens. "Oh no.”

He holds out the envelope of parchment.

She eyes it and pinches the bridge of her nose. "I do not want to read it," she admits.

Cullen manages a half-smile. "I would spare you from it," he tells her. "But now we are called to deal in miracles.”

Without another word, she takes the letter from his hand. She reads over it, nose nearly touching the page. He waits, waits until she holds it back out by the very tips of her fingers.

“Into the fire,” she says, “if you would.”

So into the blaze it goes; Cullen watches flames make the letter ash in the span of three heartbeats. He turns his head and she sits back in her chair, fingertips pressed together.

“It was my plan,” he admits. “I am accountable.”

Josephine shakes her head. “I agreed to it,” she corrects. “A sound plan, by both our estimations. Have you called them back?”

“Bull already has.” Cullen will commend him for quick action when he returns.

“Good. Wise,” Josephine exhales on a deep sigh. The line of her shoulders rises and falls. “And the Inquisitor?”

“We are called to the war table at sunrise.”

“With plan in hand, I suppose.”

Cullen nods, and she runs a hand over her face.

“This is actually my fault,” she mutters, “I told Calla with the Nevarran gone I was feeling a breath of air in my schedule. I should never give voice to such hope.”

He snorts, in spite of himself, in spite of the situation. Josephine continues, a finger idly rubbing a temple. “You might as well find a chair,” she says. “We will be at this awhile.”

He notices now the stack of pages nearly a foot high on her desk, full of ink spots and many lines of her loose, swirling script. The candle at her desk barely has a thumb’s worth left.

“When did you last leave this office?” he ventures.

Josephine blinks at the change of subject. “This morning? No. I can’t recall.” He stares at her. “What? This needed finishing.” She pats the stack of pages.

He raises his eyebrow, and she slides her thumb inside the stack, holding a sizeable chunk of the pages. “This is what the Nevarrans are prepared to offer,” she explains.

“And the rest of it?”

“What they want from Tevinter.” His eyes must widen, because she shakes her head. “It is always so, at the beginning of negotiations. Tevinter’s will be even worse. But it evens out.”

The thought of how long one must have to _sit_ to accomplish this makes him shudder.

“So,” she says. “Shall we begin?”

“I think not,” he decides, taking a few steps back. “Come.”

A blank stare. “Excuse me?”

“I cannot allow this to continue.” Cullen edges back towards the door, until he is standing in the threshold, arms crossed. “If we are going to be up half the night strategizing, I will not do it where you have been imprisoned the entire day.”

“Imprisoned _?_ ” Josephine scoffs. “So dramatic.”

He shrugs. “Slightly,” he allows.

“I have a window,” says Josephine. “I have several windows.”

“You mistake me, Ambassador,” he says lightly, turning. “I am not _negotiating._ ” Cullen strides out into the great hall until the clipped sounds of her hard-soled shoes make him pause.

“If you insist,” mutters Josephine, standing at his arm, “then I concede, if only out of courtesy.”

“A wise man accepts victories where he can.” It is stupid, to feel like grinning so much when they must confront such an enormous problem, but little makes sense these days.

“This way first,” she directs with pointed ignorance, crossing the hall and opening the door. “I missed dinner.”

“Do you know,” Cullen says, following her down the stairs to the lower floor, “that we feed the Inquisition’s prisoners promptly at the morning and evening bells? Even the magister never missed a meal.”

“A wise man understands his hypocrisy,” Josephine retorts. “A wise man remembers his aides constantly complain both of uneaten food and of snappish interactions.”

“Snappish?” Cullen opens the door into the kitchens for her. “Stern, perhaps. Not snappish.”

“Like an old man,” Josephine confirms, and digs apples out of a barrel. “An old, Fereldan man with a bark like an old, Fereldan dog.” She tosses it to him and sets one on the counter for herself.

Cullen finds a covered plate of meat turnovers left from the morning’s breakfast. “Resorting to national stereotypes,” he replies, _tut-tut-_ ing and offers her the plate. She takes one, wrapping it in a rag. “How below you, Ambassador.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Josephine says, taking a second pastry from the plate and placing it in his hand. They will both eat. “My assessments are true. I am, after all, the Inquisition’s authority.”

“Maybe,” he concedes, pushing the door to the outside open with his back. “Is that the reason for…this?” He gestures to her outfit.

“For my costume?” she chuckles. “He is old Moritalitasi. They respect conservatism and stature. Leliana said it made me look taller.”

He cannot pass judgment. “Is the effect not as I planned?” she asks. “Does Arram not have a new rival?”

“Ambassador,” he says, “do not trap me in questions with no correct answer.”

“How entirely diplomatic of you,” Josephine approves, and her smirk makes him duck his head. “I do not prefer such morose colors. But a job calls for particular tools.”

The discovery should not be this remarkable. But it turns Cullen’s heart into knots, these new additions to the list he vowed to seek at Halamshiral: a love of brightness and color, green apples rather than red, the soft way she laughs and ribs at him when their only onlookers are the hearth coals. How easily her smile comes in the dim light—how easily it appears _at all_ , now, in his presence. How it takes the breath out of him. A gift.

But that word is not enough. They are...more than colleagues. She finds his company worthwhile; he cannot understand how, given him, given their history, given everything. Here they stand, friends, despite it. The realization stuns him, a little like a blow to the head, but he is a man of faith. He knows it for what it is: a miracle.

“Dithering, Commander?” Josephine’s voice jolts him from his reverie.

“Never.” He pushes the door open with his back. “What else have you learned?” he asks, leading them across the courtyard to the stone stairs.

After swallowing a bite of pastry, Josephine says, “All Thedas would call you barbarians, yet Fereldans are by far the most easily scandalized of anyone.” She grins a little. “Mayhap _we_ are the barbarians.”

Cullen remains unconvinced. “When have I ever admitted to being _scandalized?_ ”

“You need admit nothing,” Josephine says airily, wiggling her eyebrows. “Your skin tells the whole story for you.”

That makes him stop dead in his tracks on the stairs. Josephine continues up to the next flight before leaning over the bannister to survey him. “Ah,” she says, voice rich and pleased. “And there it is.”

If possible, the back of his neck flushes deeper. “It is _night_ ,” he protests. “You cannot even see me.”

Josephine says nothing, but he follows the sound of her laughter all the way up the stairs.

~~~

They eat apples on the battlements, passing through the attic of the tavern to a spot between a ruined tower and the main fortress. Cullen dismisses the guard on duty with a nod, and Josephine sequesters herself between two stone pillars, elbows on her knees. The faint sounds of the tavern echo below them, but it is quiet. To work.

“So,” Josephine begins. “We have very little to go on, but let us outline the chain of events as best we can, without Bull or our…charges.”

“The Wardens were doing well,” he recalls. “Bull said they were excellent at dispatching the darkspawn and got on well with the Chargers. They still have yet to decide a leader—” Josephine makes a disparaging noise, “—but communication was sound.”

She finishes her pastry, idly brushing crumbs from her skirts. “Until the end,” she says. He nods. “The point of change is the arrival of the noble.”

“Why would he even be there?” Frustration leaks into his voice. “The coast was ideal precisely _because_ it is so isolated.”

“They were a merchant vessel,” Josephine reminds him. “I imagine the passage was too tumultuous and they decided to cut losses on time, not lives.” She sighs. “There was no way for them to know.”

He leans against the stone and takes a bite from his apple. The sweet crunch does little to sate his mood, as he cannot argue with that fact. “A pity,” he concedes. “Bull’s letter is sparse, but it says their ship landed nearly in the middle of camp.”

“But the conflict did not begin there.”

“I doubt it,” Cullen agrees. “Bull and I had the Wardens go…without their usual colors.” To not be readily recognized, as it were. To avoid their marked status. “Not to hide, exactly, but…”

“Tactical,” says Josephine, with a nod and a bite. She covers her mouth with her hand. “It bought time.”

“The company was Orlesian,” Cullen says, and Josephine narrows her eyes.

“You cannot say that as though it excuses everything,” she scolds.

“Does it not?” He cocks his head. “All of Orlais finds them reprehensible since Adamant, and the Wardens have little patience for those who find them so these days."

Josephine sighs and stretches her legs a little, lifting her feet from her shoes under her dress. “Murder,” she says, “cannot be attributed to _little patience._ ”

“We do not know it was murder,” he corrects. “The Chargers were at the other side of the coast, just finishing the last entrance with a few Wardens, and when the returned…”

It twists Josephine’s mouth. “Bloodshed,” she says simply.

He nods. “Bloodshed,” he echoes. “The Wardens were overwhelmingly successful.”

“The noble was left alive?”

“Yes,” Cullen confirms. “And a few members of his house. But their hired mercenary company was wiped out.”

Silence then, besides the sound of them chewing. Josephine’s brow furrows.

“Your thoughts?” he asks finally.

She swallows a mouthful of apple. “We cannot cut ties with them,” she says, and his eyebrows disappear into his hairline.

“You see a way through?” he inquires.

Josephine turns her gaze to him. “No,” she admits, “but Trevelyan will never let them go, and that is what matters.” Before he can ask why, she supplies: “Arram’s brother is a Warden. In the Anderfels somewhere, but all the same.”

“She cannot be convinced?”

“I doubt it.” Josephine tosses the core of the apple over into the abyss below, a movement that would inspire him to laughter were they not so dredged in seriousness. “But that is only half the reason.”

“We put them there,” he admits, “but they have obviously violated our purpose. We must shelter, not encourage.”

“A point,” Josephine agrees. “But who else can deal with this problem? Shall we just let them wander in packs about Thedas, like half-rabid wolves?” She stands and begins to pace, back and forth, shoes left abandoned.

“And then we would be called to eliminate them.” He crosses his arms.

“Yes,” she agrees. “And that is unacceptable.” She worries at her lip. “My old plans are useless.”

“Old plans?” Cullen tilts his head.

“I thought a noble might give them sanctuary on his land,” Josephine says, pacing away from him. “One with a generous heart, or who had lost much to the Blight. And now anyone I might have approached will run for the hills.”

He stares. “To… take them in?” He shakes his head. “Like orphaned children?”

She turns on her heel. “Don’t put it that way.”

“What moment from your interactions with them,” Cullen asks, “has told you they accept _charity?_ ”

“It’s only a matter of framing,” she says, like it’s the simplest concept in the world, and he snorts.

“What? Everything is a matter of how it is given, no matter the gift.”

“Not at all,” he argues, rubbing his chin. “You operate on two levels.” She opens her mouth, but he holds up a hand. “What you _say_ , and what you _mean._ It works, if you can speak both languages. But they do not operate that way. They cannot be tricked, or goaded, or bribed.” He gives her a sideways look. “You know this.”

She looks close to grumbling again—the way it quirks her features makes the corner of his mouth turn up.

“You protest,” she begins, “but there must be a point where they concede. They cannot act as though they are innocent.” Her shoulders rise and fall. “As though they did not nearly unleash an army of demons on the world. As though they did not murder an entire mercenary company—”

“In defense,” Cullen interrupts.

“It can begin as defense,” Josephine says quietly, “and end as murder.”

A tense quiet passes between them. She breaks it first. “It is useless to act as though we are authorities on what happened when we have not spoken to them,” she admits. “I will suspend judgment on their actions, for now. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” he says.

“Regardless.” She holds up a finger. “Regardless of _what_ may have happened, it will read to Orlais—and Thedas—as cold-hearted violence.”

He nods. That is a fact. “As unreformed violence,” he adds.

“Precisely.” She turns away and walks, finger rubbing the underside of her chin. A row of jet buttons lines her spine. “And Trevelyan has no heart to abandon them, even if we could.”

He nods. “And they will not bend to charity.”

Josephine rolls her eyes. “Even if it is barely charity, or no bending is required.”

He makes a gesture with his hand of _move on_ and she scowls at him, turning on her heel.

There is a moment of silence, and Josephine says, “Send them back to Adamant.”

The thought of it chokes Cullen. “Pardon?”

“Send them back to Adamant,” she repeats coolly. “An ancient Warden fortress, far from anywhere they could do much damage. They are close enough to our garrison that they are not abandoned by us. We will supply and guide them. They can craft good from evil.”

“No,” Cullen refuses.

“What?” Josephine has paused in wearing a tread in the stone. “ _No_ to which part?”

“All of it,” he manages.

He does not have a word for this. No one has ever supplied him with one—for what soldiers carry when they revisit the places that carved them through to the soul—whether they stand there in flesh or simply remember the day, the hour, and the smell, and the _sounds_ and the blood on the ground. This _weight_ he holds every day, at every moment, in every breath. It finds its twin in most soldiers’ eyes, whether they be Templar or Warden or Maker knows what. A memory, breathing and fanged, clamped hard into the deepest part of a person. It _is_ what he sees in the Wardens, when they bite and spit and rage against their keepers. He cannot condone, but he cannot blame them either. He was there once. Perhaps he still is.

She furrows her brow again. “This,” she accuses, “is deliberate obstinacy. Are we not beyond it?”

Cullen touches his fingers to his temples. “You have made,” he says, gently, lowly, “a beautiful solution.”

His words make her physically take a step back, as though pulled by her own unspoken words. He swallows. “It is,” he repeats, “but it is _impossible_.”

“But it lacks charity,” she rails instantly, the moment dissolving, and she crosses the distance between them. “With a surplus of darkspawn and dragonlings. Away from innocents. It works.”

“They need time,” he tries.

“We do not have it.” She crosses her arms, taps her foot, waiting.

“It is cruel, Josephine,” Cullen says quietly, and she, the moon, and the stone are his only witnesses.

The night is so quiet he can hear them both breathing. It softens her, this answer. Time pauses as she meets his eyes. She opens her hands to him, as though to say, _give me this_ , _I am here_ , and he will never, never understand her patience with him.

“I,” he says, for it is he who is unwilling, “cannot send them to where they lost everything and command them to rebuild, no more than I would ask a soldier to till the battlefield where his comrades fell.”

“There is no healing in the act?” she questions. “There is no redemption in creating that hope?”

“It is a hope,” he agrees. “It is not reality.”

“How,” she asks, gently, “how can you be sure?”

The request stuns him, a bolt to the shoulder. The words twist into their own storm, mangling and cutting at his insides, roaring to be freed, but not this, not now, not to _her._ What he manages instead is, “There was a reason I was sent to Kirkwall. I could not stay where I was and live.”

That, Andraste preserve him, is enough. She inhales sharply and remembers—it is plain in the tension that takes root in her body, the way she reaches to touch the stone pillar beside them. It is a benefit of the current mage-templar war: most do not readily remember Cullen is the sole survivor of Kinloch. It was common knowledge, once, but then the fall of a Circle was truly uncommon. It has been more than ten years since, and now when people look at him they see something else first. Another twisted blessing. He will take it for what it is.

“Oh,” Josephine murmurs, and seeing her at a loss for words hurts. He cannot say why. “I—it escaped, me in the moment.” She runs a hand through her hair, all tiny anxious motions. “You must forgive me, Cullen,” she says. It rails at him with near-metallic bitterness that the first time she has said his name, _his name_ , is in apology.

“Ambassador,” he says, and by the grace of fate his voice is steady. “I am well. There is nothing to forgive.”

She hesitates, and then clasps her hands together. She sits back in her space between the pillars with a deep sigh, eyes downcast in thought. He kneels next to her.

“It is messy,” he admits.

“Unbearably,” she says. “I cannot forgive my own inexperience in this.”

He raises an eyebrow. “An unfair standard for yourself,” he informs her. “Could you forgive me my lack of knowledge with the Game? It is an entire way of life to uncover.”

She takes a deep breath and rubs at her scalp. “And it is not unsolvable,” she says, a declaration.

“Not at all,” he agrees. “I cannot deny I make it a rockier journey.”

“It is the right one.” She looks at him. “If I am north, and you are south, somewhere between us is a perfect place.” She pinches her fingers together as though examining a gold coin. “And that is where the answer lies.”

That makes him chuckle, despite the fact his heart lodges up into his throat. Josephine rises back onto her feet, past bleakness gone. “Although not tonight,” she says. “It is fitting that we overlook where you and Seeker Pentaghast usually duel.” She goes to the edge of the battlement to look down onto the field below.

“Where I am beaten within an inch of my life?” he offers wryly, and she laughs.

“Cassandra is so ferocious,” she confesses with a sigh.

“Legends typically are.” He raises an eyebrow. “Do you watch us often?” The thought of it prickles a familiar flush up his spine, but he refuses to acknowledge the secret pleasure of it.

Josephine quickly finds her gaze somewhere else. “I, ah, have witnessed it once or twice,” she admits. “It is hard _not_ to do so.”

Cullen tilts his head. “You abhor violence,” he says, as though she needs reminding. He cannot imagine anything but her dismay. “Would it not be easy for you?”

“I have no language for it,” she attempts, “but Cassandra is like a hurricane—all fury and no mercy. You can only pray to find shelter deep and strong enough to survive her strength. I have never seen the like.”

All the poetics are too much, but yes. “She is the closest thing Thedas has,” he admits, “to an unstoppable force.”

“No,” says Josephine suddenly, turning to him in surprise. “Or, well, perhaps, but—that is what you both do.”

He raises an eyebrow, and she looks out at the green expanse of the courtyard. “You are the shore,” she murmurs. “You are steady and strong and you last, and outlast, and last. That is why I watch.”

It is as though she has stolen the breath from his lungs, or the beat of his heart, and listened to know him better than himself. At the best of times, he without words, but at this he is in freefall. And that ugly voice, dark and awake, whispers _she would not think so if she knew you true_.

“You seem to have an adequate grasp of language,” is all he can say.

Her fingertips are pressed to her lips, as though she has said too much. She laughs, small, honey-sweet and nervous. “You are quick to credit me,” she says. “We stand here with no solution.”

He sighs, and they are brought back to why they stand on these battlements under the moon. “We tell her we need more time,” he offers simply. “We tell her we cannot make a plan without more information.”

Josephine frowns. “A delaying tactic. She will not be pleased.”

“It is because of my obstinacy,” he says, recalling her phrase. “As usual. That she will expect.”

“No,” she corrects. “It is because we are dedicated to finding the most correct route of action.”

“Diplomatic.”

She smooths her skirts. “I am a professional,” she reminds him. “And this is mine as much as yours. She is not merciless.” She rolls her shoulders. “May I walk you back to your office?”

It surprises a laugh out of him. “Am I in need of escort?”

“It’s polite,” Josephine insists, going back to her shoes. She lifts her dark skirts and slides her feet inside one. She overbalances and Cullen reaches out—her fingertips touch the steel greave latched around his forearm. Just for a moment, just for balance. Her ankles are bare and slender, and then his eyes drift away as she smooths her dress back down.

“Then I cannot refuse,” Cullen says, finding words at last.

It is a short ways back to his office, but when they bid each other a brief goodnight, he watches from his door until Josephine crosses the stone bailey and disappears back into Skyhold’s fortress. It is polite, he tells himself.

He sits at his desk and drowns himself in correspondence for an hour or two. It reduces the whirling thoughts of his mind to a dim hush.

At least, it quells him until midnight, and then he lies and bed and stares through the hole in his ceiling, unable to rest and unable to pray, as is his custom before falling asleep. He usually does it standing over his washbasin, his last lifeline before surrendering himself to sleep and what comes after.

But there was too much to consider tonight, and so he lays.

 _Guide me to divine what has changed._ He does not know if he prays to the Maker or speaks to himself, but Cullen is not clever enough to solve mysteries between people. Cullen cannot navigate this space between them, sacred as it is. They have maintained a truce for some time now. But this is beyond what he understands as _peace_.

To debate and discuss—and argue plainly, and fiercely, and well. But never once was it a battle. In truth, they were better for it. _Stronger_ for it.

 _Let my arm not falter._ And it was a pleasure. He rolls over, unable to even consider the stars witnesses for this thought. He should only feel the good ache of well-used muscles, of sharply maneuvered wit.

Yet, it has left him warm for hours after. _If I am north and you are south, somewhere between us is a perfect place._

The words make home in a dusty corner of his being, just as that tender memory from Halamshiral does. Their purpose and their meaning lie hidden to him still—he only knows they will keep him warm in shadowed places, shield his back against the wind.

 _Help me to be worthy._ How he always ends. It is not that woken darkness speaking, but his own soul, shaking and true: he neither is nor can be.

~~~

That night, Cullen dreams. Without lyrium, they take on a life and strangeness of their own—abstract, poisonous journeys into the Fade that, put to paper, would easily be mistaken for a madman’s ravings. They make little sense, yet every detail is broken chip of himself he knows intimately.

He dreams the way he used to dream, before leaving both the lyrium and the Order, before Haven and

the Inquisition. In the morning, when he attempts to understand _why_ , he will assume it is because he breached the subject with Josephine, and the memories it stirred. That, and—she is a brightness in his life now, and he knows it. When such flames are lit, he pulls back into his own bleakness out of instinct. Perhaps it is the reason for all the he has pushed through since Halamshiral. This is not meant for him.

But tonight—tonight, he is caught.

He dreams, remembers the sound of plate on stone. Uldred and his maleficar held them and plucked them from their prison, like gods choosing their next morsel. It became commonplace, by the end. He does not dream of when he was the only one left, and the focus of the demon’s full attention—that enters his nightmares enough with fervent versatility.

The _smell_ from that room: the acrid taint of dried blood mixed with human waste, the cold tang of lightning, humid and foul. The stench cutting the air like running your tongue along broken glass. The templars had huddled together in their warded cage, armored shoulder to armored shoulder, praying, promising themselves: help will come. Help will come. Help will come.

They had forgotten to pray for it to come _in time._ A fatal mistake. At first, his fellows were certain they could outlast the wretchedness of it because they were many and strong and freshly made. They trained for this, they slept in shifts, they prayed ceaselessly. Their grim hearts mourned for their comrades, thought of how they would honor them once the trial had passed.

When the maleficar took Knight-Captain Haim (an orphan, an archer, a piss-poor chess player, an incredible foot-racer) they knew they were dying out. As soon as he was pulled away, Cullen counted their number decimated to less than half. All was quiet. It had been days.

Haim did not become a demon. Instead, Uldred broke his body and tossed pieces of him out once an hour. An arm. A foot. A thigh. Three fingers, curled in grip. A wrist. A right leg. He remembers the precise sound of each piece, the heaviness of life scattered on the floor. Each shoulder, one after the other. The clatter of collarbones and ribs. The wet smack of the torso. Ribbons of offal.

Each hour, the toll of plate on stone. Each hour, the best of them rent to pieces. Each hour, they grew quieter, more still, eyes on the arches of the ceiling.

He dreams of Haim’s head falling from an outstretched hand in the threshold, the crack of the skull on the floor and how it crookedly it rolled, as though trying to find the parts to make him whole again.

He wakes and dry-heaves over the side of the bed. It is an old dream, one with taste.

~~~

He dozes till just before sunrise, only just touching the surface of the Fade. He sits on the edge of the bed, feet firmly planted on the floor, until he is himself again.

He completes his morning exercises, stretches the thigh that never stops aching, dresses and armors himself. Down the ladder, then, and across the bailey, and through the solarium. Each step is raw and rattled—a skeleton in iron, unprepared for the day. But it is only the morning.

Varric sits at his table in front of the fire, a wad of parchments in front of him, quill in hand, a mug of coffee steaming. Cullen has seen him here before—Varric’s morning routine is oddly charming.

“’Morning, Curly,” he mutters gruffly.

Cullen nods, and heads across the hall. He is the last into the war room. Trevelyan is yawning into her hand at the head of the table, and Leliana and Josephine have their heads pressed together over a letter.

Josephine nods to him as he takes his place at the table and lights the tall red candle on her tablet. “Should we wait for Morrigan?” she inquires.

Cullen had nearly forgotten her. “No,” Trevelyan says. “When we meet again this afternoon, she will be present. This needed to be between us.” She stretches out a shoulder. “Leliana, if you would.”

Leliana speaks at length at securing more paths for their spies through the mountains, before Josephine goes into the Wardens with an admirable amount of detail. She speaks of their first conversation with Leif, Bram, and Lysandre and their resistance to most plans of action, of Cullen’s plan to send them to the coast with Bull and the Chargers, and the subsequent slaughter.

Trevelyan, just as Josephine predicted, is not pleased to be without a solution, but not as disappointed as she could be. She agrees to wait.

“I don’t like this,” Trevelyan says. “But I will not allow us to abandon them now. Not after we strung them along this far.”

Just as Josephine predicted. They share a nod across the table, and Trevelyan shuffles through some notes to move them on to the next update. Josephine smiles at him. A good day.

It a shorter session, as they will reconvene again soon, until Trevelyan yawns and holds out a hand. “Josephine,” she murmurs, “before we go—an update on the House of Repose?”

“I am still reaching out to the DuParaquettes,” she responds, very quickly, so quickly it makes his ears perk. “Nothing yet. Soon, I am sure.”

Cullen surveys the map—one of Josephine’s markers is just outside Val Royeaux, in the Orlesian countryside. Trevelyan opens her mouth but Cullen is speaking before he knows it. “I apologize,” he says, leaning over the table. “I don’t recall this operation—what is the briefing?”

Everything around the table goes a harsh, confused cold. It is a moment he will never forget. Trevelyan stares at him openly. Josephine busies herself with a letter on her tablet. Leliana’s eyes flick back and forth between the ambassador and he, back and again, back and again.

Finally, the Inquisitor speaks. “Why we went to Val Royeaux, Cullen,” she coaxes, with disbelieving slowness. “You were there at the beginning—don’t you remember? Josephine’s couriers?”

It is Leliana, of course, who connects all the threads for what they are. “There is a contract on Josephine’s life, Commander,” she states flatly. “For attempting to reestablish her family’s business in Orlais. We discovered it in Val Royeaux.” Leliana turns her gaze to Josephine, who has not looked up from her tablet. “She can brief you when she has the time?”

Josephine glances up, but not at him. She nods once, then goes back to her letter.

“Of course,” says Cullen, but everything has gone cold. He cannot breathe. He cannot look at her. He cannot look at anyone. Instead, he stares at the marker on the map, as though in its stationary way it could bring order to the world again. He has a voice, he remembers. He can speak. “What are we doing about it?”

Again, it’s Leliana who answers. “I suggested,” she says, “taking out the contract and the assassins altogether.”

“What do we need to do so?” Cullen asks, hands flat on the table. “I will find the resources.”

“A few of my best people, well-placed.” Leliana crosses her arms. “A simple matter.”

He looks to the Inquisitor. “Then we should not delay.”

Trevelyan clears her throat. “Josephine has elected to take a route to retract the contract. Without bloodshed. It is the course we are staying for now.” She looks pointedly at Leliana, who looks as ruffled as he’s ever seen her. It hits him: both he and Leliana are in complete concordance.

Josephine will not look at either of them. Trevelyan is still staring at him like a madman. “Let us reconvene at the end of the day,” she dismisses with a wave of her hand.  

“If we could speak,” Leliana tells her, taking her arm as she eyes the two of them, “about the qualifications for the new Divine?”

Josephine extinguishes her candle and walks out the door peaceably, down the hall to her office. He wrests himself away from the table, shuts the doors behind him.

He must stop. He must breathe. He must breathe before he says something he regrets, before he gives voice to this wailing void in the pit of his stomach, this voice crying out _why_ and _how_ and _it is happening again, it is happening again_ , this anger tainting every drop of blood in his body. It rises, a bile in his throat, a rage with no direction but to fill him from feet to scalp.

He pushes forward. There must be a reason.

Three steps down into Josephine’s office, and every one of them feels a year until he is standing in the center of the room, in front of her crackling fireplace. Josephine gives the letter she writes her undivided attention.

His voice comes out bewildered. “’All is well?’” he repeats, breaching the silence in the room.

Her quill stills. “Please,” she says quietly. “I cannot do this now.” And then he knows—it was not oversight.

“We must,” he says. “How did I not know?”

“It is my business,” is her response, curt, certain, and cold. “It has little to do with you.”

He motions helplessly down the hall, where Leliana and Trevelyan still converse behind the heavy doors of the war room. “Leliana is our spymaster, and my oldest friend here, and she would have found out anyway,” she sighs. “And the Inquisitor was beside me when the House of Repose made its presence known.”

Cullen’s eyes widen. “Did they—did they _attack_ you?”

“No.” Josephine looks almost offended. Offended on behalf of _assassins._ “They are a business. It was a courtesy, to let me know the contract was being carried out.”

“But why these measures at all?” he asks, wildly parsing the facts. It feels half a dream.

Josephine’s sigh is heavy as stone. “A hundred year old agreement,” she begins, voice listless, “after my great-great grandfather got a DuParaquette heiress with child and half-ruined their family. Their royal ties pushed the Montilyets out of Orlais, and the contract ensured we would never come back.” She shrugs. “It is a small obstacle.”

Cullen chokes on her phrasing. “End it,” he demands. “Send Leliana to retrieve the contract and eliminate those who would carry out its mission.”

“So quick,” she says, “to sentence everything to ruin.”

“That is the point,” he replies, tone sharper than he wants. “Speed is of the essence.”

Her eyes flash. “You are suddenly an expert on the politics of warring merchant families? How did I not know?”

“Do not task for me for speaking _sense_ ,” he warns. _Find your calm_ , he thinks, but the words disappear against the rising tide of anxiousness in his blood. His armor feels tight as a noose.  

She shakes her head. “How can you speak sense if you cannot fathom the equation? This is not your world.”

“You have said that before, and it has not stopped us,” he ventures, an attempt at peace, and watches her stiffen and stand at her desk.

They are already knee-deep in a battle—it hums with the notes of their past skirmishes, and the the pit of his stomach sinks. Yet it is nothing compared to her: all rigid lines and conflict. She looks to be arguing an entire _war_ within. Her hands clench once, then loosen. And again.

They ride the edge of a precipice; he senses it in the air like dried blood. They teeter just on the knife’s edge of peace.

“Josephine,” Cullen tries.

“There is not an _us_ in this,” she decides. And there it is—the unbalance, the fall.

A handful of words scrapes him clean to the bone. He forgets his voice. She continues with a deep breath: “It is already unacceptable that the Inquisition is involved—it is my family and my problem.”

“Will you find every excuse to carry the whole world on your back?” Cullen reminds her, reeling. _There is not an us_ echoes through him like a lost sound in a cavern. But he straightens his bones, unyielding.

“The Inquisition is involved. Fact, not theory.” His fingers curl around the pommel of his sword. “So let us carry you, as you have carried us.”

“You mistake me for someone else,” Josephine says firmly, “if you think I need bloodshed to put a plan in order.”

“You mistake _me,_ ” he rebukes, confusion giving way to hasty anger, “if you think I will let you go through this alone.”

Josephine pulls her gaze from him, her eyes at the window. She breathes again to steady herself, her fingers just touching the wood of her desk. “This is why I did not tell you,” she reveals, whisper-soft.

It is as good as a blow to the chest. _Overcome_ , he commands himself wildly, as he would if he dragged a broken arm or a limp leg. _Overcome._ They have lived through worse—he can survive her cuts, if only she might listen. “Because I would demand answers?”

“Because you demand foolishness.” Josephine’s voice has suddenly lost its resigned calm—and it is relief. This, this he can fight. She walks out from behind her desk, each step a careful measure. “You demand an answer I cannot give, that I _will never give._ You demand anger when this is simply the way things are.”

“They do not have to be,” he replies.

Josephine shrugs her shoulders. “That is my sense, as you desired. You may take it or leave it, but it is mine.”

“I refuse to believe,” Cullen says, “that you, of all of us, say there is only one way through.”

She shakes her head, bristling. “Do you think me a child?” she snaps. “I have considered every possible solution—and this is the only one. My family must exist after this deal is done,” She touches her temples. “What does it say, that the Montilyets will simply scourge with violence what they cannot do in business? It is a _transaction._ ”

Cullen opens his mouth but she raises a hand. “We will be ruined, and they must not suffer. They matter more.”

“Would they demand this of you?” His voice is cold. “Is this the price they ask for your service?”

 _That_ pushes Josephine to cross the distance between them. “Do not dare to presume you know them.”

The anger in him curdles. “You assume they would approve of your sacrifice for their longevity.” She is stunned into silence at his words, and he barrels on, unable to stop. “Rebuild,” he pleads. “If either way is an end, choose this. You could find a way to right it, to pave new roads for your family—if there was anyone who could, it is you.”

“I am finding a way through,” she says, nails biting into her palms. “But it will be _my_ way.” She shakes her head. “I should have expected this.” Her voice is a murmur. “I was a fool.”

“I am trying,” Cullen tells her, voice strained. He is, Maker help him. “But you are so—so wholly _unconcerned_ for your own safety.”

She narrows her eyes and closes the distance between them “Why rage at what I cannot change—would that calm you, if I went into hysterics and demanded a guard at every turn, never a moment alone?”

“It is not weakness to be protected,” he grits out. “To face adversity with someone at your back.”

Josephine casts her eyes heavenward. “Is Skyhold so vulnerable? We are far from Val Royeaux, tucked in the crevice of the south’s worst mountains. I am safe enough.”

“They will find a way.” How can she not see it? How the quietest evil can slide in through the smallest gap in stone, and fester until everything is poisoned. “We do not send the Inquisitor into the wilds of Thedas alone. How can we abandon you to this trouble?”

“Because I asked you to,” she snaps. “Find a way to respect that.”

“The risk,” he attempts, and stops. He turns away, running a hand over his face. It does not matter—not how he feels, attempting to breathe in this crossfire, to everything in him shattering like porcelain on her every syllable. It is little. It is nothing. She cannot come to harm. She cannot. “You make a wretched and fearful gamble.”

“We all face the end of days,” is her reply. “Yet we survive.”

“Perhaps,” he grinds out, unable to break her resolve, “but you are more than susceptible.”

“ _Susceptible?_ ” Her eyes widen as she takes a step to breach the distance. “Because I believe in peace?”

He makes a frustrated noise. “No—only that you have forgotten the existence of danger. You are not above it.”

Josephine’s anguish lashes at him like the curl of a whip: frustrated and angry, yes, but marked deep with fresh hurt. “I am not afraid.” Her voice cracks in the center.

” _I am_ ,” Cullen whirls on her, out of patience, and the rawness of his voice makes the world twist and still. It is the knotting of an irrevocable thread of time, as though their slow steps since touching the ground at Haven have all conspired to lead them here to this moment, this place, this pain.

Her hand covers her mouth. His throat aches. “This is your home,” Cullen attempts, and his voice scratches against the air. “Your home,” he repeats, bare and rough, “and there are those who would break it and bring you harm, and I cannot bear it.”

Josephine’s hands slowly drop down to her sides, and he watches her clench them again, watches her nails bite into her palms. Those same hands that held him, guided him, opened to him like flowers the night before, now war against themselves. Another battle to which he is mere witness.

“What you cannot bear,” Josephine murmurs, “must be your concern, and not my own.”

The sting of truth sinks into his skin, and something new is born inside it. “I know,” he says, “Seek other shoulders, if not mine.” _I would stand at your door till the sun rose._ “But do not play at choices—there is no choice when an assassin appears at your bedside. It is not a choice when a dagger is at your throat. It is not a matter of _planning_ when your life is at stake.”

His words only serve to harden her spine with fresh anger, so much she shakes with it. “You presume much,” she chokes out, as though his words have curled around her throat. “ _Much_ , and I shall play my own life as I wish.”

The echo of the past fight rattles him. “That is not what I meant,” he manages, nearly pleading, realizing the clumsiness of his own mistake.

“You will say that till it becomes your death knell,” Josephine snaps, “but that does not change what you say, Cullen, it does not change _you._ ”

The sound of his name in her mouth in anger, now. “I am only trying to—“

She holds up her hands. “ _Enough_ with trying. Enough with this waste of my time. If I wait for your respect, I will be dead long before assassins ever make it up to Skyhold.”

Cullen opens and closes his mouth. “You mistake me,” he manages.

“What do I mistake?” She advances on him, and he takes a step back, falling into retreat. “Your incivility, or just your contempt for my ideals?”

“When your _life_ is at stake,” he snarls, “someone should challenge you.”

“Of course,” she retorts. “I expected no better from you.”

“Should I have yawned and returned to my tower?” he wonders aloud. “Should I say, ‘be well, Ambassador, may the Maker watch over you when death comes to your door?’”

“I did not predict the flagellation to my sense and expertise,” she says, “as well as my morals, but, ah, you have risen far beyond my expectations this morning.”

“Is this worth it, then?” He gestures uselessly at her office. “Holding on to all this, at the expense of yourself?

“That is the _point_ ,” she snaps, “You do not give beliefs up when they become harder to hold. You should know that. You—they are one and the same. I am what I do.”

“And I must bend my knee to that ultimatum?” he retorts. “To live as the world _should_ be, instead of what it is?”

“Someone must.”

It is more than he can shoulder. “At the price of your life?”

“How many times must I say _yes_ before you hear me?” She throws her hands up. “We have all been in mortal peril since Corypheus burned Haven to the ground.”

“You know it is not the same,” he counters. “You and you alone are the target, though you cannot accept that for your all your tenets and ideals.”

It lights a fire in her. “My ideals give my life purpose,” she rails, “and in separating them, you divide me into _nothing_ in your contempt.”

“It is not _contempt,_ ” Cullen protests. “but challenge—do you think it is in my nature to let threats pass unchecked?”

Josephine laughs, rough and harsh. “So now you call upon me for patience, for understanding, when you cannot give me it yourself."

“Untrue,” he breathes. “You did not grant me it either, when you hid what happened.”

“Because I foretold this quagmire.”

“No,” Cullen says quietly. “Because you did not trust me.”

A cold silence again, and they are frozen inside it. “At least in that respect,” Josephine tells him, voice hard, “we find ourselves on common ground.”

They cannot even look at each other. Everything is undone. It has taken all the work of twenty minutes.

He tries to say her name, and finds neither heart nor voice can carry the word.

“Apparently,” is all he can manage.

Just for a moment, the careful anger of her face crumbles and she presses her hand over her eyes.

“How,” she begins, and then must stop. Her shoulders shake. It is as good as claws in his back, this strange tearing of his soul in two—this need to touch her, to shield her from his own words, to bring his knees to the ground in a plea for forgiveness.

She takes a deep breath to steady herself. And then it hits him, a realization from deep in his bones: the moment before a blade pierces flesh, the breath before the cudgel rams his ribs, Trevelyan in the doorway. The _knowing,_ certain as the sun’s rising. He has lived it too many times to not know the signs. A shiver of a phantom scar, understanding precisely how it will be made.

And Cullen, master of the artless surrender, about to earn his title. It takes all the life from his body, and the anger bleeds out into the stone beneath their feet, but too late. Too late. She will be severed from him, by his own hand, by his own words, just as he realizes he will not survive it.

“Josephine,” Cullen rasps, a man drowning, “I don’t give a damn about ideals. I cannot lose you.”

The pause of inhaled breath. The moment is like broken pieces of glass, shattered and sharp. “Do not claim that,” she breathes, “Do not claim that, when you separate me into worthless pieces.”

“You—“

“No,” she says, hands a-flurry, and it makes him step back. “No. _No more._ I will not suffer you.” The hard line of anger in her voice twines with a mystified pain, and the sound breaks him open. It is because of him. Because of _him._ No need to wait for the harm of faceless evil, if Cullen can make it so.

“Go.” Even she cannot hide the tremble of her voice behind the iron.  

“Wait,” he whispers. “I did not—let me— _Josephine._ ”

But he is in the threshold, and her hands are on the door. “I will remind you, ser, of my civil title.” Her shoulders sag just briefly as she begins to push it shut. “Using it will be good practice in remembering my capability.”

He opens his mouth but then he is out in the hall. “Good morning, Commander,” she says on a fractured note, and then the way is shut, and he stands alone.

Silence, then. An unbearable quiet. Long minutes, stretching into eternity.

His head hangs, and his eyes catch the shadow under the door. Not his.

The tips of Cullen’s fingers touch the door—tentatively, tenderly. Perhaps her hands still lay flat against the wood, her weight resting wearily on her arms. Perhaps she stands still, unable to stir for the reeling. He tiptoes his fingers, inch by inch, to where he remembers the press of hers. The shadow does not move. Perhaps she breathes, just as he does, through brittle lungs and brittle heart.  

“You are right,” he murmurs, the words falling from his lips unbidden. “You are right. You are the master of your soul. You know what is best for you, and yours—I am the fool in this game, not you.” His fingers tense.

He inhales through his nose, and he can feel his heart trembling in his armor, rattling up against his breastplate like a drum. “It is messy,” he says, “and you will find a way. But I—“ He falters. “The _price_. It goes against everything I am, all I stand for, all I understand. You know this.” Cullen inhales. “I am certain of it, for you know me.”

It takes precious moments for him to gather the next words, for they leave cuts in his mouth. The shadow is patient, or Cullen is a madman, or both. “Your life?” he finally manages. “As forfeit in this demon’s gamble?” A shudder racks him, reignites the anger in his heart, red and hot. Not at her—but at this uncertain tide, bearing them forward. “It blackens my heart to know harm might touch you here. It tears at me—at my duty, yes, but,“ He must stop, and try again.

“I have no _words_ ,” Cullen grits out. “Only vows and arms—and what I am. I would bear your shadows, your sorrows, your solitude. All that I can endure. You have me.”

His words shake as they drop from his lips, flickering like a candle in sharp wind. But they hang, golden with truth, in the silent air of the hall.

And now he must destroy it all. “But I cannot give you my silence.” Cullen’s voice goes quiet as a whisper. “I will not accept the price, or condone the course. Can you not see why?” He steels his heart, weak thing that it is, against his own voice. “Hate me. Rage against my bullheaded foolishness. Find me unworthy. I am.” One of his hands on the door pulls itself into a fist. “Maker, _I am._ But everyday I will still hear your voice, irate and impassioned and—alive.” He exhales. “Alive.”

He pauses, steps back. The shadow does not move.

His hands slide from the door to hang uselessly at his sides. What a fool he is. What an _utter fool._ Fate, whose fist seeks to crush Cullen at every turn, has left him here, empty, on the wrong side of the door.

It is over. The memories of turning, her fingers woven through his, careful steps on a lonely balcony, flicker still. Despite fate, and despite the rancor she must bear for him now, he will keep them close. Cullen has lasted for longer on less.

He turns on his heel, blindly strides out into the broken morning. The hall is all silence, cold and pale with early sun, waiting for the day to begin.

But the shadow—the shadow pools in the light of Josephine’s door, exhales in a soft pile of velvet and silk. As though locked knees stagger and sit under the weight of it all. As though it waited, but waited too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And...there we go. As always, thank you for all your feedback - I so appreciate every bit of it.  
> tumblr: klickitats


	12. ras-le-bol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josephine battles with Cullen, the Inquisitor, a Grey Warden—and of course, herself. 
> 
> Thanks to sunspeared for her incisive and insightful beta work. 
> 
> ras-le-bol: a French idiom for when one has had _enough._

Deal with a warmonger, use a warmonger’s terms. They are in _stalemate_ , a hard and small word for a yawning chasm that snaps threads and bridges as it grows in size. Josephine respects an efficiency of language.

It starts with how he averts his eyes the next time they meet in the war room that day, hours after the fight. When she opens the door, he looks anywhere but her. And she can do nothing but the same. A moment there, a moment gone.

It grows because they allow it. Stalemate: a word for wounds scabbing and festering in unison, but cannot find the stitch to heal.

The first leg of the plan is smooth as new parchment. Of course the DuParaquettes desire their status restored and their noble house reinstated. Orlesians to the bone. A letter from a mage _paramour_ is enough to earn Countess duRellion’s sponsorship—that, and Josephine’s gentle reminder of how she secured her daughter a lauded position on the Nevarran mercantile council.

The pieces are in place, and the second wave begins. The judge who signs the petition for sponsorship has requested a band of soldiers to assist him in hunting a grand beast—Josephine hires a mercenary group from Ferelden to accompany him through the Emerald Graves in return for his cooperation.

(“Ask Cullen to find you some soldiers,” Leliana had said, an elegant eyebrow raised sky-high, “We have ample who would serve you well beyond the call of duty.” She looks at the contract and frowns. “Surely better than these rapscallions.”

“Absolutely not.” Josephine, adamant, would tolerate no more intersections from the Inquisition.

“Pride is a demon, Josie,” Leliana replied, squeezing her shoulder, and that had been the end.)

~~~

A letter gone unanswered waits in the top drawer of Josephine’s desk.

_Yvette says you danced with only one person at the Winter Palace._ Laurien words the sentences so carefully even the ink is hesitant to linger on the page. _The Lion of Skyhold. This Commander Cullen. The thorn in your side. Do you need reminding?_

Josephine can picture the bite of his lip as he considers. The gentleness of every phrase shames her.

_Josie_ , he writes, _is he a place of rest, or a place of war?_

Days turn into weeks, but the letter keeps asking.

~~~

“Ruffles,” Varric says, “it’s just a game of Wicked Grace. We all need to unwind a little.”

Josephine busies herself blotting at an ink stain on her palm.

Varric sighs with a deepness that is unlike him; he is _disappointed._ A special place in the Void, Josephine has always thought, for those who disappoint Varric. Or a very dark place in literary history. “He won’t be there,” he tells her, crossing his arms. “Something about handling an arms shipment himself.”

She pauses in her dabbing, just for a second, but Varric is too quick not to notice. “It’s been a month,” he tries, and Josephine only has to shake her head a little, and he stops.

“I will come to your game,” she assuages. “We have not had time for cards since before Halamshiral, and I have missed it.”

His eyebrow arches. “Good,” he says. “I’ll tell everyone you’re out of practice.”

Even better. Josephine nods her approval. “Please do,” she says. “I look forward to it.”

Varric turns to make his exit, and when he’s halfway to her door, he pauses and turns. Even as she looks down, rubbing her fingers with the handkerchief, she feels his evaluation.

“Anything else, serah?” she asks, tone light.

“Just thinking about how much gold I’m going to lose tonight,” he says, and keeps going. When he opens the door to leave, he says, “ _Weeks_ , Ruffles.” And then, Andraste preserve her, he pats the door with the flat of his hand like a reminder, as though she doesn’t know. As though she doesn’t _know._

He disappears out into the hall. She tosses down her handkerchief. The nerve. .

Of course Varric was a witness—who else was responsible for getting Calla so quickly that day? She had burst into her office all a-flutter only a minute after Cullen had gone, and found Josephine half collapsed on the stone steps. “Oh, my lady,” she murmured, reaching for Josephine’s hands and hoisting her to her feet, pulling her to her desk and sitting her down.

Numbed, Josephine barely registered the sounds of Leliana and Trevelyan coming out of the war room, passing through the hall and her office. Calla had angled her body to disrupt the line of sight, and made show of leaning over Josephine’s desk and going through her correspondence. _This letter from Marquise Papulon is long overdue_ , she’d said. _Do you think it concerns the duchy he’s trying to barter for a bride?_

As soon as they were gone, Calla pressed the backs of her fingers to Josephine’s forehead.

“Wine, I think,” she decided.

“Calla,” said Josephine, “it’s not even time for breakfast.”

She considered this, drummed her fingertips on the desk. “Brandy, then,” she said, and reappeared fifteen minutes later with sweet tea laced with the contents of one of the better bottles from the cellar. Maker bless Calla.

Now Josephine sits, pressing her thumbs into her temples. Better to let him think it slipped her mind. Better not to react, when she has thought of little else since. It rends her vulnerable, especially when her focus is not letters and machinations entire.

What he said at her door. It slips in. Her hands tremble with swallowed anger, even as her heart… demands. The _things_ it cries out for, with no desire to negotiate with etiquette or her better sense. But Josephine does not tolerate demands. Not under any circumstances.

She puts them in their place. Secrets them away to hidden chambers in her heart where she dares not touch. In the very early morning, or half-past twilight, they cry out for supplication, and Josephine says _no, no._

Despite it, this is still true: where possibility once lived and breathed is now home to nothing.

That morning carved a piece out of her she had no idea was there. Anger, she will admit—to Varric, to Leliana, to Calla. To anyone. It comes easy these days, like a match at her fingertips. Accessible and at the ready.

But she could not anticipate this ache. This _ache._ It begs an answer. It begs a word, a hand, a voice at her door. But there is nothing, and nothing soothes.

_Tame_ , snickers a voice in the back of Josephine’s head.

Their eyes no longer meet. At the sound of heavy boots, her feet turn another way, and she has watched his shoulders retreat from her more times than she can count. They attempt nothing. Even at the war table, inches from each other, Josephine keeps her eyes on the Inquisitor.

They do not speak their names, or their titles. Perhaps they do not even breathe the same air. But she sees his hands shake when he moves his pieces, watches him shift back and forth as though pain licks at his insides. In another life, she would touch his arm, take him aside, make sure he was well. Not this one.

They travel alone, their orbits never touching. _That is what you wanted_ , says the wicked voice in the back of Josephine’s head. The voice is never on her side, and so she ignores it with a practice only the years can bestow.

Besides, work to be done. Work to be done. _Keep saying it._ Work to be done.

The reminder goes a long way towards crushing her trivial wants. So much rests in her arms today. The arrangements for the visit of the Tevinter ambassador, another three letters to Nevarra, and King Alistair may need her again for Orlais, he has sent no less than six requests—the list rolls out of her like flimsy parchment, like a bit from the _commedia_.

But there are wants, there are needs, and then there is what cannot be quieted, no matter how she tries.

Calla taps her desk, a mug of warm cider in her hand. It jolts Josephine from reverie. “My lady?” she murmurs with a concerned tilt of her head. When did she enter? When did Josephine become a person who stares at the heaps of paper on her desk and gets lost in her own mind?

“Thank you,” she tells Calla, and takes the mug. She is working on her latest letter to the Nevarran ambassador. He writes with a frequency undoubtedly bolstered by some hidden Moritalitasi ability. “If you could bring me my notes from the, ah, fourth day with Alesone?” She touches the bridge of her nose. “The day we discussed land distribution in Cumberland. If you would.”

“Of course,” she says, with a smile and a little bow of her head, and goes to rifle through Josephine’s archives.

Varric’s sheer _audacity_ , implying she did not feel the passage of time. She brushes it aside, and opens a letter with her pen-knife.

Josephine lets loose her annoyance at Wicked Grace that evening by playing the fool—fanning herself with one hand, only betting a copper or two at first. Everyone gathers except for Solas, fawning about in his rotunda, and Cullen and Leliana. The Inquisitor gets drunk, wildly drunk, and Arram carries her out at the end of the night over his shoulder. She kicks her feet like a child. It’s wonderful.

Varric snickers at Josephine the entire time but doesn’t give away the game—and she traps the Iron Bull like a gnat between her thumb and forefinger between his fifth and sixth tankards of ale.

She wins his mighty drawstring pants, and Dorian helps her hoist them up alongside the Inquisition’s banner outside Skyhold. They blow, striped windsocks in the mountain sky, and Bull sports nothing but a loincloth and a grin wide as his horns for the rest of the week.

~~~

Varric’s words spark the universe to turning, and the next day, the stalemate ends at the war table.

“I didn’t realize,” Trevelyan says, her head in her hands, “forgiveness could be a mistake.”

“It isn’t,” soothes Leliana. Josephine hums in agreement. Cullen says nothing.

“Although, it wasn’t just forgiveness,” Josephine ventures, and Trevelyan nods, sighing.

“It was appeasement,” she mutters, and Josephine nods. Appeasement for the Warden’s losses at the Storm Coast, appeasement for their status as Inquisition conscripts. When Ser Ruth had thrown herself at Trevelyan’s feet and begged to die for the crimes of her fellows at Adamant, Josephine knew a great deal more than one life balanced on the edge of that knife. She whispered in Trevelyan’s ear: _mercy_. _Will we punish one when we have not punished the many?_ Their relationship with the Wardens could not survive the kind of blow that execution or even public humiliation might deal. So Trevelyan listened.

Now Ser Ruth seeks to bring the word of the Andraste to all the dark corners of the earth—by whatever means necessary. They are all quiet, an almost reverent silence for the magnitude of the problem.

“Do you mean to go against her wishes?” Cullen’s voice, steady and even.

“How can I not?” Trevelyan says, drumming her fingers on the Hissing Wastes. “She wants to die for us as means of penance.”

“A suicide,” Josephine agrees. “Slower than the Deep Roads, but with the Herald of Andraste’s name on her lips and our sigil on her back.”

“Not to mention what she will ferret out as worthy of her blade.” Leliana purses her lips. “In the name of conversion.”

“Unacceptable,” Trevelyan nods. “And I cannot let her go knowing she means to die.”

“Have we changed our stance, then?” Cullen cocks his head.

Trevelyan furrows her brow. “Our stance?”

“On sacrifice,” he says, “by those who serve the Inquisition.”

It throws the entire room off-kilter. Cullen remains fond of and skilled at the surprise attack. He does not look at her, but Josephine knows the tipped point of each word and its unspoken challenge. More than that—it strikes like lightning to her spine. It’s not even _subtle._ How _dare_ he _._

And how is she half-grateful for it underneath the sudden swell of anger? Part glimmer, part madness. This, at least, instead of the unbearable distance. This, at least, she can fight.

Trevelyan slowly tilts her head. Leliana makes no such maneuvers.

“It’s more than that,” Josephine begins slowly, fingers tightening around her pen. “She wishes to die for cause where it is unnecessary.”

“You pardoned her,” Cullen says to Trevelyan. “You did not leash her life.”

“I know that,” says the Inquisitor.

“Give her what she needs, then. We cannot decide if she lives or dies.”

“Inquisitor, think of the consequences,” Josephine slides in. “Is this the justice Thedas expects from us? We assume she will do good work with her sword. What if she decides a Dalish clan needs the word of the Maker? Or a mage family living in Redcliffe? You would have her exact that judgment with an Inquisition sword and shield, Commander?”

“Do we impede upon her free will?” Cullen turns just slightly so their eyes meet, and the rest of the world goes hushed.

“I am concerned with all that such an act might touch in our name.” Josephine raises an eyebrow. “On our watch.”

“So we did not pardon her at all,” Cullen says, ice, “we merely maneuvered her into a place where we could manipulate her future without her knowledge.”

“You assume malicious intent.”

“I assume we proclaim one course of action while our hands do another.” He raises an eyebrow. “Is this the justice Thedas expects from us?”

Trevelyan suddenly slaps her hand on the war table. It startles Josephine—they are not even half-way into what promises to be an argument that leaves blood on the map. It stops everything.

“Enough,” says the Inquisitor in a clipped tone. “Leliana,” she continues, “find a way to steer Ser Ruth from anything harmful. Perhaps to a Chantry in the wilds, where she can hear the voice of the Maker better than she can hear it in Skyhold.” Her gaze on Josephine and Cullen is like ice. “Andraste herself would have a hard time finding it underneath all the bickering.”

“Consider it done,” Leliana agrees, placing one of her pieces on the map.

“Thank you.” Trevelyan’s voice is like ice. “If you would leave us, for a moment.”

Leliana nods. “As you wish,” she says simply, and goes. She glances at Josephine, and the moment the doors to the war room swing shut Trevelyan crosses her arms.

There is a long moment of silence. “You disappoint me,” Trevelyan finally says. The words are so simple and cold. “Can you not control your distaste for one another?”

Josephine inhales. The Inquisitor names their enmity, and it rings with a certain damnation, as though now it is law, unchangeable and unyielding.

Trevelyan raps her knuckles on the desk. “I can’t change your hearts,” she informs them, “but I say _enough._ You forget yourselves.” Her gaze, hard and cold, somehow rests on both of them at once. “The Wardens have been back nine days. Where are you in your investigation? Where is my solution? Where are my _advisors?_ ”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches the back of Cullen’s neck tint pink in shame. Her own ears burn. “Forgive us, Inquisitor,” she murmurs at the same time he says, “My apologies.” Maker. They cannot even manage to speak amends without tromping over each other.

Trevelyan waves her hand. “I do not care for them. Fix this.” She picks up her staff. “We are the Inquisition. Neither of you are exempt from that fact. From _we._ ” And then she strides out of the room.

They stand there, and Josephine is suddenly aware they are alone for the first time in weeks.

“Do not speak to me like that again,” she mutters.

“I wasn’t,” is his curt reply. “I spoke to the Inquisitor of Inquisition matters.”

“A child’s logic from the commander of our forces.” She sets the tablet down on the war table harder than she intends.

“In which way?” he replies, and she watches his hands tense. “Fallacies are fallacies, and when I see them, I bring them to light. As do you.”

“You allude to me,” she says, “as though I am not here at all.”

“The movement to follow your course of action is an Inquisition decision,” he says with a shrug. “And it affects all we do, including how we navigate the future. You do not move one chess piece independently of all the others on the board.”

Josephine glowers. “I am not a chess piece. No one moves me.”

“We move others,” he says, stabbing a gloved finger next to the piece Leliana put down outside Lothering. “We cannot pluck at people’s lives without recourse. And I did not say you were.”

“Then do not treat me like a pawn,” Josephine snaps. “I am here. Speak to me.”

“I did, and you did not care for what I had to say,” Cullen reminds with a listless shrug of his shoulders. A perfect meld of anger and defeat. “I appeal to the power above us to see reason when you and I are unable.”

“I might listen,” Josephine snaps, “if only you spoke of matters concerning your opinion.”

Cullen’s eyes cast downward, a flicker of broken sorrow quickly resolved behind a steely defense. So quick it nearly slips through her fingers. When he looks up, he is ready again.

“You ask for what I cannot give,” Cullen says. “I will arrange a time with the Wardens.” With that, he marches out, leaving the heavy door open in his wake.

It is not until his shoulders, heavy with fur, disappear from view, and when the door of her office slams shut, that she remembers. Oh. _Oh._ His silence. He cannot give it. His silence.

~~~

A runner passes her a message that afternoon to come and find Cullen after the evening bell, and once the bell is struck and night has settled over the fortress, Josephine gathers herself and sets out for his office.

It takes a great deal to pull herself from her desk. After three weeks with no word, a letter from the mercenary company fell into her hands with the evening correspondence. Yes, they accompanied the judge on his hunt. Yes, they helped him slay the beast. Yes, the judge signed six copies of that contract you wanted (Josephine is thorough), but in the wee hours of the morning, a giant wandered into camp and scattered them all.

_You paid us to accompany and deliver_ , it says, _and didn’t say a damn thing about giants, or red templars, or half the shit that’s out here. Find someone else._

So her signed contracts are in a lockbox somewhere in the Graves, the judge has pattered off in a sulk to a forest on Lady LaFall’s estate, and Josephine is left with nothing. Deep half-moons dot her palm from fisting her hands under her desk. Habit.

But she must put it aside. There will be time tonight to spin rotted straw into gold. She needs all her focus for the matter at hand.

For Josephine has a plan—an ultimatum. She spent the afternoon writing it, before her letter from the mercenary company threw the entire day over the mountain’s ledge. And she plotted it perfectly, crushing little cries of protest from her wilder spirit under her thumb at every turn.

_In the name of a peace and justice between two factions, the so-named Commander Cullen Rutherford and Lady Josephine Montilyet, these accords are hitherto put forth as law. If signed, the factions pledge to follow each vow till death, destruction, or a new accord be written and agreed upon._

_Whereas the two parties cannot speak or continue without veiled personal accusation, at peaceable volume, or on relevant matters, these stipulations must be met:_

_The two factions will not raise their voices above an appropriate speaking volume at any time_

_The two factions will only discuss projects directly assigned by the Inquisitor or that directly affect the outcomes of Inquisition movements and resources, such as the establishment of new keeps, holds, or large-scale confrontations with an enemy._

_The two factions will not speak to each other unless at a called meeting at the war table, or by pre-approved appointment from both sides. In the event of a time of crisis, the two factions must have a third party present._

_Conversation must never stray to personal matters. Debate must be halted._

No more storming into each other’s offices, no confrontations after heated sessions with the Inquisitor, no more long, improvised meetings of strategy in the kitchens and the battlements, or murmured pleas at her door—no. It must all go, if they are to survive.

He respects rules and structure, so she is sure he will find it amenable. A relief, even. It will have to work, for neither of them would part from the Inquisition while they live and breathe. The solution is cold and merely satisfactory. Fereldan enough for Cullen.

( _But it will put you back into stalemate_ , a voice in her groans, _how can you bear it?_ And Josephine ignores it because something must be wrong with her to prefer ceaseless, cutting arguments to nothingness. And not just arguments—battles that turn her insides black with anger at the things he dares say, at how far back they have plummeted so quickly, at how even though _he is wrong_ each sentence is an unfailing arrow.

She advocates for peace—regardless of how it happens, or how it sits with her, or how like _heavy death_ it feels, how can she object? Josephine cites it as another reason for treaty, structure, order. It will protect her from herself.)

His office is empty but for an aide, carefully arranging new missives on Cullen’s desk. The aide tells her to find the kennels (and then, at her blank look, informs her the kennels are next to the stables), if it’s urgent—the commander is late returning.

It is not urgent, but Josephine cannot bring herself to wait, so she heads down into the courtyard. The door of the kennels is propped open—she ducks her head inside before immediately realizing her mistake and scurrying back.

Josephine peeps through the crack of light—a few hanging lamps fill the kennels with soft warmth. Everything is covered in straw and smells obviously, overwhelmingly of _dog._ She breathes carefully through the corner of her mouth so she will not die.

In the center of the room, Cullen and a young man (Rory, that is his name, from her campaign across half of Thedas to find allies for Adamant), are on their knees with the largest mabari Josephine has ever seen—barrel-chested, heavy teats, black as pitch, and ugly as a twisted lip.

And then the beast gives a high whine and churns her powerful legs against the straw. Cullen holds her tight, her head wedged under his arm so she cannot sink her teeth into his flesh—because his coat and armor lie in a neat pile on a nearby hay bale. Of all the times to go without armor—Josephine’s fist clenches. The mabari struggles, undulates, and he bears down just enough until she stills.

“You got her, ser?” Rory asks, readying a pair of forceps. Pale yellow quills spike her flank and leg. Andraste preserve them.

Cullen nods. “We’ll be fine. Go ahead.”

It begins—Rory pulls out one long barb with a practiced quickness, and the mabari snarls. He presses a thick, wet, green mixture to each wound with his thumb. The next pull brings thrashing, and a piercing whine. The pain in it makes Josephine press her fingers to her lips.

And there are so many quills. Rory goes quick as he can. The few on her leg go all way through the tough sinew. Josephine racks her brain for why they are familiar—one of the Inquisitor’s stranger mounts is probably responsible. Her eyes drift back to the quills—thick dribbles of blood drip onto the straw, despite the poultices. She would close her eyes, but looking away from his surgeon’s work is half-impossible.

One of quills snaps between Rory’s forceps and he swears—Josephine starts herself, and her heart gives a shiver at the yowling. The mabari somehow rises all the way off the ground in her fit, and Cullen has to press his entire body down against her back to keep her still. A prickle of sweat dots his brow.

“I’m sorry,” Rory sputters, fumbling for a different tool laid on the cloth next to him. That’s right—he has a stutter. A terrible stutter. Yet it was gone until this moment.

“It’s alright.” Cullen’s voice is steady. “Keep going.” When Rory hesitates, Cullen nods his head. “I know you can,” he says, with all the faith in the Maker’s Chantry.

He nods and goes back to the quill. She closes her eyes at the next garbled cries from the mabari, sharp and weak and so afraid. How long has she been standing here? It feels like years. They pepper the air, and she takes a deep breath.

Under it, she hears a soft _shhhhh, shh, good girl_. Her eyes open. Cullen runs a steady hand over the beast’s ribs. He bends his head and murmurs—she cannot hear the words, but the sound of it eases the knot inside her. Just a little.

(In the stillness, the ache in her, the ache without relief, vibrates like an old memory. Is grief a demon? She will have to ask Solas. It must be, for what is grief other than desire, to _want_ what is lost.)

It carries them through the last few barbs; Rory’s hands move with confidence, and the mabari whines softly, her big paws flailing at the straw. “Done,” he finally says, and the tension dissipates like an exhale.

Cullen eases the dog out of his arms, sitting back so her head rests in his lap. She pants with exhaustion, her muscles trembling. Rory wraps her leg and flank, and wordlessly passes the bowl of poultice to Cullen. He raises his eyebrow; Rory nods. “Just elfroot, mostly,” he says.

Cullen scoops the green, wet paste up in his fingers and Maker bless them, slides his hand inside the mabari’s mouth. Her maw is great enough that it disappears entirely. Josephine can barely watch. There are so many _teeth._

“You’re good with them, ser,” Rory says, after a few moments.

Cullen shrugs. “Not like you,” he admits, sliding the last of the mixture down the mabari’s throat. “My mother was as good as a farrier, and the closest thing we had to one.” He lets her lick his hand clean with a pink, lazy tongue.

“If she ever lacks for work,” Rory chuckles, finishing the bandages, “send her here.”

The way Cullen smiles and looks down—his mother is gone, Josephine realizes. He scratches the mabari behind the ears and her eyes close. _How did you not know that_ , she chastises herself, and then realizes just how much is unknown to her. A lightning bolt. Does he have a family? Are they all gone, or just his mother? Are they safe? Does he write to them about her, just as she complains to Laurien about him? Do—

The sudden flurry of curiosity is cut short when Rory clears his throat. “Ser,” he says, “the lady ambassador is here for you.”

Caught. Josephine steps into the light, and into Cullen’s gaze. He stares at her. “Forgive me,” she says, “I did not want to disturb your—process.”

He nods once, curt, and casts his eyes at Rory. “Is there anything more you need from me?” he asks.

Rory shakes his head. Cullen eases the mabari’s head from his lap and rests it on the straw. He carefully rises to his feet, and Josephine steps further into the kennel.

Josephine catches herself making a study of how the straw clings to the knees and legs of his leather breeches. He brushes them off with his broad, pale hands. There is a scar on one of those palms—his right hand, his sword-arm. She remembers.

He crosses into the shadow where she stands, arms crossed. They look at each other for just a moment before he looks away.

A strange pause, and then he reaches to the straw bale between them and begins armoring himself, one piece at a time. All his movements flow with the ease of a life’s routine. “The Wardens have responded,” he says, belting his chestplate.

Josephine is distracted—why is he doing that? The hour is late, surely he means to go back to his office and write letters, perhaps even sleep. Why—

Oh. Oh. Cullen does not need his armor to hold a massive mabari by himself, not even a glove to slide his hand into the beast’s wicked mouth, but for Josephine it is a necessity. Oh, no. No. No. Josephine, master of words, is empty.

It is such a small, quiet action from a man like him, but how—it should not make her feel this way. Carved out and raw. This is what she wanted, yes? Fully armored and plenty of distance between them. This is what she wanted.

_It doesn’t matter_ , she reminds herself, grappling for the hard and cold and just part of her. _It doesn’t matter._

“Ambassador,” says Cullen, and she shakes her head to realign her focus.

“Yes,” she replies. “Are they ready to talk?”

He tilts his head. “No,” he says. “But they will never be ready.” He clasps on one of his shoulder pieces.

The moon peers in at them through the cracks in the roofbeams. “You made a time with them.” She breaches the silence.

“Two days from now,” he informs her, “down at the camps, at noon.” He finishes his pauldrons. “I will be in inspections all day—can you find your way down?”

Josephine frowns. “Of course I can,” she says. “But this is not amenable.”

He pauses for half a second as he latches a greave over his forearm. “Oh?” he inquires.

“We do not go to them.” He should know this, she thinks. “They either come to us, or we should find a neutral space.”

Cullen tilts his head. “A… neutral space,” he says slowly, and then shakes his head. There is a long silence as he reaches for the opposite greave.

So it is time, then. Josephine takes a deep breath. “If you have something to say,” she says, and gestures.

He stiffens a little. “Neutrality,” he says, “does not live at home.”

It takes all Josephine’s will to not roll her eyes. “Of course it does,” she corrects. “If you disagree, then have them meet us here.”

“No,” he answers plainly before finding his doublet and pulling it over the steel.

“You cannot just refuse,” she counters, “simply because the idea came from my mouth—”

“They are scared _witless_ ,” he interrupts her, eyes flashing. They are finally looking at one another. “They believe we will turn them over to Orlais for hanging or worse, or we will scatter them across Thedas like ashes.”

“And so now we pander,” Josephine mutters, “Unwise, Commander.” She clicks her tongue.

He jerks his head to the mabari resting on the kennel floor. “Cornered dogs bite. It will be easier on everyone to do them this small courtesy.”

“You let the accused dictate the terms.”

Cullen finds his coat and pulls it on roughly. “This is the problem,” he snaps. “You have already made up your mind about their guilt.”

“The world has done so,” Josephine tells him, crossing her arms across her chest. “That is not my fault.”

“Then do what you can,” he replies with an exhausted sigh, touching his brow, “and do what you _do._ ”

She cannot place why, but it rankles her. “And what is that, exactly?” she snaps.

They are interrupted by the heavy creaking of a kennel door across the room. They turn their heads, and

Rory lets a tumble of little furred creatures out to scamper. The pups all but trip over themselves in their haste to get to their mother, who gives a long-suffering sigh.

One of the pups loses her way and comes to investigate the two of them, nosing her way to her shoe. Thick and stout, white with thick patches of brown and speckled all over. Josephine, who would rather only touch an animal if it lay cooked upon her plate, sighs and inches her foot forward. Just a little.

Even mabari young are little boulders, not like Antivan hounds—sleek hunters, moving like wisps of grey silk. The pup lies down, paws daintily crossed, and sniffs Josephine’s foot inquiringly. She then drools with appreciation on the leather. Cullen shifts in his boots, and her eyes jerk up in time to see the smallest twitch of his lips. The scar at his mouth crinkles.

The mabari mother makes a low growl, and the pup pulls herself away to dinner. Josephine rubs the toe of her shoe into the straw, which does absolutely nothing.

“You listen,” says Cullen, and his voice is quieter than before, all the heat gone out of it.

Josephine, again, does not know what to say. “Noon, in two days,” he reminds her. “I will see you below.” He bids goodnight to Rory, and then strides out.

The moment he is gone, the pit of her stomach knots. A slipped hand into her pocket, and the parchment rasps between her fingers. She forgot her ultimatums.

~~~

_Mme. Josephine: you offer coin, gold, and glory – but that stretch of the Graves? That stretch of the Graves, even with ten men? Just for a retrieval? Excuse me for saying so, but—fuck, no, milady. Can’t you find another way?_

~~~

It’s not a slow journey down to Skyhold’s camps, but it is the type of venture that makes you dread the long hike back up. Skyhold bears no sun today—the sky is made solid with the rolling of deep grey clouds. Leliana advised boots, and Josephine scoffed.

The path is steep and wrenched with turns—the swooping hatchbacks dip low and lower. Gatsi has designed bolt-holes with heavy doors of metal and wood to hide away supplies on every level—she pauses every so often to admire the work, and the ingenuity of the idea. He’s carved etchings of creatures into the iron bands across every door. She stops and traces the tip of her nail along the lines of a herd of halla.

Josephine is never alone, as Inquisition guards are posted at each bend. They nod at her with soft inclines of their metal heads as she passes.

And the camps are—well. _Chaos_ is an easy word to throw around when the world is ending, but it suits Josephine’s observations as she walks down the hill. And then she pauses, turns, and jogs back up the hill up one sweep, and then another.

She stands on the crest of the hill, peering out over the landscape below, panting. She rests her hands on her knees.

“My lady?” One of the guards tilts his head.

“It’s on a _wheel_ ,” breathes Josephine. Brilliantly choreographed.

“…Yes?” says the guard, shifting from foot to foot. “Always has been.”

She can see each spoke—and while she can’t see far enough inwards to identify the spokes well, it’s suddenly so clear. There are the camps, where the units rest their heads—and practice fields with targets for archers, a center gathering point at the hub for leadership, tents and soldiers and shields glinting in the sun. Clear pathways, marching tracks, and a wide open valley beyond them all for field maneuvers. Everyone is so small—tiny gears and cogs moving together with purpose and precision.

She expected a messy sprawl—how can armies be anything but a nuisance and a mess, scattered across the ground like handfuls of errant grain—but this is methodical, purposeful. It possesses an intensity of logic.

“Who designed this?” Josephine asks, and the guard looks at her blankly.

“Ah, what?” he says. “The commander tells us where to go, if that’s what you mean.”

Curious. She thanks him, realizes she will be late, and must rush down the rest of the way.

When she finally enters the camps, everything _moves._ Not a single person stands still—a squad of archers brushes past her on the way to a practice field, runners and junior officers dart with scrolls under their arms and missives in their hands—completely overwhelming, and strangely communal all at once. The _smells._ Cooking food, sword oil, rust and leather, sweat, smoke from damp logged fires. A girl no higher than her waist flies by, a bag of wooden practice swords over her shoulder. How she’s supposed to find Cullen remains a mystery.

Josephine, the only one standing still, feels a hand push _down_ at the back of her head. She ducks just in time as an elven woman with a massive halberd strides by, the metal head swishing over them. And then there is Manon at her elbow, pulling her hand from her head.

“My lady,” she says with a little bow. “Forgive me. The commander asked me to come find you. May I take you to their tent?”

“Of course,” Josephine replies, and Manon takes her by the arm without another word. “Am I late?” she asks.

“Just a little,” Manon reassures. “It is no trouble.”

They cross the hub, swerving around small packs of troops marching, Inquisition agents hauling supplies until Manon chooses a tent seemingly at random, pulls open the flap, and Josephine ducks inside.

Cullen stands at a table, looking at a map. And Lysandre, soft iron hair piled atop her head, curls up in a chair. Her scythe staff rests across her lap.

That is all. Neither of the two rabble-rousers from the first meeting are present. Josephine exhales. What a relief.

Cullen looks up. “Ambassador,” he says, a bow of his head. “Thank you for joining us.”

“Of course,” she replies, taking a place at the end of the table, smoothing her velvet skirts. “I hope I did not make you wait too long.”

“Not at all.”

Lysandre doesn’t say anything, only glances sideways at her before going back to the map. Her eyes reveal no wariness, no fear. She is a wolf at the table. Confident. Vicious.

No. Lysandre is reasonable. She must remember this.

She moves a marker. “The company landed here,” Lysandre says, and suddenly they have begun. “It was a terrible storm. Felled a tree or two not far from us. We’d moved to higher ground.” She moves another marker to signify it.

“And they landed in the rocks?” Cullen postulates.

“Indeed,” says Lysandre. “Middle of the night. But we got them up.”

“Up?” inquires Josephine.

“Water was chest high on a man,” she says, making a line at her collarbone with a hand. “Weary to the bone, and the noble kept prattling on about saving the cargo.” She folds her hands over the staff. “A useless creature all around.”

The disdain in her voice is so subtle it takes Josephine a moment to fully comprehend the statement. Instinct twists in her stomach. But no—this will be simple. Simpler than screaming and spitting at each other, as they proved in the last attempt.

“You didn’t identify yourself as Wardens,” confirms Cullen.

“You advised us such action might be prove ‘a deathtrap,” Lysandre says, devoid of much emotion at all. “We did not.”

“Yet they discovered it.” Josephine thumbs her chin. “Were there no suspicions at all? No mishaps or arguments, scuffles between parties?”

“I want to be perfectly clear,” Lysandre says. Her voice is even, in perfect balance. “We pulled them from the water. We dried them with our blankets. We welcomed them into our tents. I myself gave up my bedroll that night to the lord’s wife and their child.” She looks up, her jaw lined with certainty. “They were in need. We rose to meet them.”

A deliberate pause. Her fingertips drum a pattern on her staff. “We thought of doing good for Thedas. As we were told.”

The cold in her statement creeps all the way to Josephine’s spine, and the silence lingers in the air a half-second too long. “Understood,” Cullen affirms. His fingers tense on the table, anxious. _Don’t be_ , she wills, not thinking. _It was both of us._ “The night passed without incident.”

“It did.” Lysandre moves a marker on the board. “In the morning, Bull took most of the mages to help barricade the last darkspawn entrance two miles from camp. They left early—it’s a simple enough task, and we would be on the road to Skyhold by the noon sun.” She folds her hands again. “Nothing remarkable about it.”

She stops talking. Her eyes rest on the marker signifying the Warden camp

“What changed,” Josephine asks, and she does it gently, she knows she does because her eyes are on Cullen’s hands and they ease, with all the slightness of an exhaled breath. “What changed, in the morning?"

“They were happy,” Lysandre says simply, and it aches. “To be of use. To accomplish what we are meant to do, and to do it easily. Not a single loss to the darkspawn. Close calls, but no death.” Her countenance is so still, like stone. “They were breaking fast. Someone was singing. Spirits were high.”

An unexpected pang grips Josephine’s heart. A peaceful morning. A happy morning. The image of it sits in the quiet between the three of them, and they patiently wait for Lysandre to continue.

“A cry, downwind,” she finally says. “One of the mercenaries flings himself out of a Warden tent, scrambling on his hands and knees, like a frightened child. Screaming in Orlesian.” Lysandre’s eyes see something far beyond them. “ _Les Gardes. Meutriers, tous. Me faire du mal._ ”

Cullen’s eyes find Josephine’s. “Wardens,” she interprets, her voice hushed. She speaks softly when she speaks of the dead. “Murderers, all of them. He tried to hurt me.”

“ _Démon, démon,_ ” Lysandre tells them distantly. “ _Courir!”_

Everything is still. “Run,” she murmurs.

The rest needs no translation.

“Keep going,” Cullen says, not gentle, but firm—a voice like a shield. “Please.”

Lysandre tilts her head up, realigns herself. _Soldiers need direction_ , Josephine thinks. “They were on us like dogs,” she says. “They didn’t want to die. It was over.”

“But _how_ did they know that you were Wardens?” asks Josephine.

Lysandre reaches forward and rests her arm across the table. She unbuttons her shirt at the wrist and peels away the fabric—blackened wounds, a weaving of scars, beginning in soft lines around the dip of her palm and traveling far, growing thicker as they go. Gristly.

“We carry the Blight,” Lysandre tells her. “We shed the blue and silver and our names, but these do not fade.” Josephine stares—she cannot help herself. Lysandre buttons up her shirt again. “The mercenary had bad wounds from the night before, and Rall was trying to heal him. He forgot his sleeves.”

Josephine swallows. The simplicity catches her for a moment. _He forgot his sleeves._ And now many lie dead. “Did you…” Josephine begins, fingertips balancing on the table. “Did you try to reason with them?”

Lysandre turns her stare on Josephine, eyes blank. She is asking as easily as she knows how, but they are untouchable, and the gaze grows cold as winter. The twist in the pit of her stomach tightens.

“She must ask,” Cullen says, in that same voice, a shield at her back. “ _We_ must ask, hard as it is, and we ask much of you.”

Lysandre closes her eyes. “Rall came running out after him. One of the mercenary’s fellows ran a sword through his back. And then everything went to pieces.”

“Why wouldn’t they just run?” Josephine asks, touching her temple. “They were afraid. Why not run?”

Cullen speaks instead. “Mercenaries,” he says, voice quiet, “don’t run at the first sign of trouble. They draw steel. That’s their way.”

Lysandre nods. “They weren’t ready for us. But they wouldn’t stop.”

Cullen makes a soft noise of agreement under his breath. “So the more of their number fell…”

“The harder they fought,” Lysandre finishes, nodding again. “We lost Wardens. Not just Rall, who merely provided a kindness. We burned fifteen Wardens on the outlook.”

She watches Cullen’s eyes furrow. A steep loss, then. She realizes she has no context for the number—a deeply unpleasant feeling.

“Did you try to reason with them?” Josephine asks, because she must. The air, if possible, grows colder. Both Cullen and Lysandre’s heads turn, slowly.

Josephine doesn’t know what to say. Before she can even nod, Lysandre fixes her with a level stare, the like a dagger pinning the center of a target. She knows it for what it is. Josephine’s silence is marked, like a scar between them: _you underestimated me._

“I watched my people die,” Lysandre murmurs. Josephine opens and closes her mouth, but says nothing. “I couldn’t leave the woman and her child. But I watched fifteen of my Wardens die, and more injured. For no purpose.” The corner of her lip curls. “I suppose we didn’t say _stop_ , _listen_ , _make peace._ But I think dragging a man out of the water, letting him share your bed and food—if that didn’t speak well enough to it, no platitudes would make a difference.”

She is right, Josephine realizes. It wouldn’t have mattered.  

“We sent a runner to get Bull and the others,” Lysandre finally finishes. “I took him aside when he came back. We burned the bodies, and the Chargers escorted the family to where they needed to go. And we came back here.”

The story lingers between them all. Josephine takes a breath.

“Is that all?” asks Lysandre.

“No,” says Josephine, too quickly. But she is half-astounded by the request. “There are reparations, yet.”

“The Wardens would never insist on that,” Lysandre waves it away with a little gesture of her hand. “We have no need. It is part of the work.”

It is almost like they speak different languages. “ _No_ ,” she says again. “Reparations to the family—to Orlais.”

The shift in the air again—Cullen looks sideways at her, could he be _any more obvious_ —makes her smooth down her skirts, straighten her spine. “You have suffered a grave loss,” she starts, “Survived a terrible blow. But this is not the end.” She tilts her head. “This is only the beginning.”

Lysandre merely tilts her head. “Of?”

“Atonement,” says Josephine, and the look on her face is as good as a blow. She furrows her brow.

“Surely,” she says, “the way this looks—not only to Orlais, but to all Thedas—that it damns you?”

“Surely,” Lysandre says, “self-defense does not call for forgiveness.”

Josephine’s nostrils flare—but she keeps her eyes on the map. “Perhaps. But it is another black mark on your name,” she says quietly. “And you already bear much.”

“That is the way of Wardens,” Lysandre returns, hands folded over the staff in her lap. “Misunderstood, feared, cast away. We live with it.”

“I understand.” The way Lysandre gently tilts her head asserts _you do not_ so clearly it raises the hair on the back of Josephine’s neck. “But this is much worse than you realize. Orlais mourns its safety,” Josephine corrects. “Orlais shakes in its boots. They will not take this lying down.”

“Weisshaupt will force them,” she says. “They always have.”

“Then tell me where Weisshaupt is,” Josephine presses. “Tell me when they will arrive to smooth over the charred remains of Adamant. When they will deliver you a new commander. When they will negotiate with Orlesian gentry to reinstate you.”

“They move slow.” Lysandre’s eyes are grey and green, like the sea. But they do not rock with balance—they hold an impenetrable steadiness, solid as stone. Josephine cannot look away.

“My lady,” she says, “they do not move at all.” It must be spoken aloud. Its weight hangs, the silence deafens.

And then Cullen says, “You have us.” The reassurance touches her, solid as a gloved hand at the small of her back. Warm and broad. He only touched her so once. Yet the memory is undeniable, sudden, and so stunning she cannot speak.

Lysandre breaks the moment when she says, with unflinching certainty, “The Wardens cannot meet your expectations.”

“They are not so high,” Josephine protests, encouraging. “Show Orlais remorse. It will work miracles.”

She does not respond.

“Find a handful of Wardens and promise them into the noble’s service for a year,” Josephine says. “I will write a letter to the empress on your behalf, and your leadership will lend their signatures to it.”

Lysandre looks up at her. “This noble will be eager to let _murderers_ back into his home?”

“It is their way,” Josephine answers with a shrug. “A transaction. He will appreciate it.”

“I see,” says Lysandre, “that he honors life for what it is. Business.”

That doesn’t sit well with either of them, especially Cullen, who shifts in his boots. His jaw tightens as he clamps down on whatever he will not let himself say.

“No,” says Lysandre, finally.

Josephine reaches for her own patience. “Then the letter, at least. Explain your position. The trials you have overcome. The suffering you endure.” She straightens. “And beseech her for mercy.”

“No,” says Lysandre. “The terms are unacceptable."

“Something must give,” Josephine says. “Believe me when I say we cannot let this lie.”

“I am content to let it do so,” Lysandre answers. She rests her back against the chair. “Orlais will overcome it in time.”

“You think there will no retribution?”

“What has happened so far?”

Cullen furrows his brow. “An entire mercenary company attacked you without thought to their own survival, to the point where all their number lie dead.”

“They lack the means to respond,” Josephine says, “but that will not always be so. And you are under our protection.”

Lysandre shrugs. “It seems a waste of time,” she says, “to worry so deeply about such a massive action before there is any truth to it.”

“You do not understand,” Josephine says, and she does not mean to say it, but now they are back at where they started.

“What,” Lysandre says with deadly care, “do I not understand?”

“What will happen to the Wardens,” Josephine says, ignoring her own grating frustration at the mistake, “when the Chantry finds a new Divine?”

“The Chantry does not bother with us,” Lysandre agrees, “until they need us, much like the rest of the world. We do not fear them.”

“You never tried to summon an army of demons before,” Josephine points out.

“Erimond and Clarel no longer walk the earth.”

Cullen touches the overlook on the map, the site of the bloodshed. “That subtlety is lost on Orlesians.”

“They fear you,” says Josephine. “All of Orlais fears you. The empress, the clerics, the people—and now the nobility.”

“Again,” Lysandre tells her, “that’s never mattered before, and it doesn’t matter now.”

“She’s talking about an Exalted March,” Cullen grinds out, all iron, and Lysandre tilts her head so slightly if Josephine had blinked, she’d never have marked it. She is listening.

“They have no Divine,” she states again.

“Who says they will wait?” Josephine shrugs. “Their clerics can agree on a common enemy, and the empress and the Chantry have always enjoyed the spoils of a firm relationship.”

“They lack means.”

“Means,” Josephine says. “Not motive. You supplied them with plenty at Adamant. Now you slaughter innocents.”

“Ah,” says Lysandre. “So that is what you choose. To side with them against us.”

“That is her purpose,” Cullen cuts in. “She knows how they think. How else do you find aid against your enemies?”

“My Wardens will say—she is trying to make us quiver under the leash. A new master testing her strength.” Her fingertips drum a tattoo on her staff again. “Wardens don’t go to their knees.”

“We took you in,” Josephine says, “instead of scattering your order across the wilds—this is part of the bargain. You must let us _help._ ”

“There hasn’t been an Exalted March in an age,” Lysandre says. “An overdramatic fear.”

Josephine shakes her head. “Please. This is Orlais, where whispers become law overnight.”

“And you have no defenses,” Cullen adds.

“No advocates,” agrees Josephine.

“What purpose do you serve?” Lysandre asks with a tilt of her head. “I thought we had you.”

“You need more allies than the Inquisition.” Josephine folds her hands patiently. “Restore trust.”

Lysandre’s tone signals the conversation is _over._ “I do not deny the time it will take, but Wardens have always lived in Orlais. Wardens always will.”

“You have pushed them to desperation,” Cullen attempts, but she holds up a hand.

“You speak in impossibilities,” Lysandre says. “We live them.” She rises from her chair.

Josephine can take no more. “They can simply _make more_ of you,” she snaps.

Everything freezes. Caught. Cullen stares at her openly.

“You assume they balance your lives as equals. You are wrong. We are past _why_ ,” Josephine continues, unable to stop. “Orlais watched their Divine— _their_ Divine—murdered with no retribution. They spent the last two years witnessing the slow death of their country as it ripped itself apart. Their own nobility attempted to assassinate their empress. And they have dealt with those responsible.” She smooths her skirts. “The clerics seek a new Divine. Orlais allies with the Inquisition against Corypheus. Gaspard rots in chains. Duchess Florianne is dead. So, answer me: who is left?”

Lysandre does not surrender the dignity of her attention, but Cullen stares. He grips the edge of the table. His eyes say _stop_ , but Josephine knows she is right, _she knows it_ , and that matters, and it is the diplomat’s job to communicate, to say what needs saying, no matter how hard it is to say. And they are out of time.

“Who is left?” she repeats.                                        

“Ambassador,” he says.

“Your leadership threw in with Corypheus—and no matter the _why_ , that remains. You raised a demon army to crush the country that housed you and let you do as you pleased, untouched, for an entire age.” She swallows. “They did not act against you, and now _their citizens_ die at your hand without recourse.”

Cullen turns to her. “Ambassador,” he says again, urgently, _stop_ without _stop_ , but Lysandre is a soldier, and he has told her to be blunt, straightforward, to not dally in three types of language—if Wardens will not be bribed, she will not do so, not with coin or softness.

“The Wardens of Orlais will be no more. They will not rest until each one of you is no longer a _threat._ No nation will question it, or raise a hand in aid.” She makes each word a pointed barb. “Then they will sit back, raise their glasses to a defeated enemy, and call for new recruits.” Josephine folds her arms across her chest. “And _only_ then will Weisshaupt answer. Ferelden will send new conscripts, as though you never lived. You will be extinguished.” She inhales. “You have nothing to bargain with: no power, no value. Do you deny it? Do you deny they have no love for you, your demons, or the blood on your hands?”

A delirious pause—the air itself shakes, and before she can go on, Cullen answers for Lysandre. “Ambassador,” he says, voice cold and stony as the mountains surrounding the valley, “she does not.” His hand goes to his brow.

“Speak,” says Lysandre, cold as ice.

“I would not see the Wardens become the Templars,” Cullen responds, all calmness. And that changes the tension. Another infinitesimal glance from Lysandre. It spikes anger through her from sole to scalp. _Why does she listen to him?_ it rages.

He clears his throat. “Templars have no Calling. But they feared the death of their Order, their way of life—for a templar, there is nothing else. They are _allowed_ nothing else.” He rests his hand on the pommel of his sword, the very picture of certainty. “And for that, they linger under Corypheus’ heel and we hunt them down like animals. I will not tolerate it again. You have done too much.”

He gestures to the map. “But we must leave this posturing. If your people cannot bear it, help them understand. Make them stronger.” He looks to Josephine. “If these questions are intolerable, how are you ready for anything?”

Lysandre lays her palm flat on the table. “Tell me why I shouldn’t take my Wardens and leave you.”

“Leave us?” Cullen looks curious at the bluff. “Where would you go?”

“Enough,” says Josephine, unwilling to let the conversation go forward without her input. “We will not fall into that circle again. My lady,” she looks at Lysandre, into those grey and green eyes that betray nothing, and see everything, “if you go, who will Orlais call upon to find you, and bring you to heel?”

The quiet is tense as a held breath. “Ah,” says Lysandre. “But you have a choice.”

“Not if you maneuver us into a corner,” Josephine corrects.

Lysandre’s hand pulls into a fist. “Cowardly,” she murmurs. “A cowardly answer. You always have a choice. We chose to follow Clarel, and pay for it. We chose to save that crew, and pay for it. We chose to defend ourselves, and pay for it.” She looks up at her, and the coldness in her eyes rattles Josephine’s very bones. “You do not want to _pay_ at all, Ambassador. I suppose that is the point of you.”

_A useless creature._ Lysandre doesn’t need to repeat herself—the phrase hangs in the air like an arrow pointed directly for Josephine, and all three of them hear it.

“Do you think choices have no consequences?” Josephine asks, amazed. “No matter how well-intentioned—”

“What did I say?” Lysandre says, low and deadly.

“A choice is yours,” Josephine says, folding her arms across her chest, “but you cannot dictate the price you pay for the poor ones.”

“Now we find the root,” she says. A long pause. She presses her stave into the ground and stands, tall and steady.

“We’re not done,” says Cullen.

“You will find a way to live with that,” Lysandre says. “I share your view, Commander—the Wardens cannot become the Red Templars. Consider me assured of your good intent.” She continues dryly as she walks to the entrance. “We chose to ally with the Inquisition. But I will not pay the price of her _wishes_ for our prosperity _._ ”

Some combination of the sidelong look she gives Josephine, the bleak emptiness of her tone, and the fact that, yet again, Cullen is poorly attempting to play peacemaker—it all hits Josephine with sudden fury, enough to knock the breath from their lungs.

Lysandre opens the tent flap, but before she ducks out, she turns on her heel, as though to say something—

Josephine interrupts, before she can stop herself: to make amends, to do _something._ “Please wait, my lady. We can try again.”

—And Lysandre purses her lips into a thin line, gives a small, dismissive shake of her head, and leaves.

She is gone. True silence, as she stares at the tent entrance, and knows Cullen’s eyes rest at her back.

For the first time, Josephine hears the heavy patter of rain sliding down the tent roof. Thunder rolls, lazy and hushed. She braces her fingers against the table, and then, without a word, strides out into the rain.

Josephine makes it sixteen paces outside the tent before she must pause to figure out how to find the path back up to Skyhold, and then Cullen strides by her, coat a wet mange of fur and boots squelching through the mud. He does it with obvious purpose—to lead her up the mountain. Even from behind him, even covered in armor, she reads the anger in his shoulders, in the strained way he marshals each movement.

His anger calls to hers, one fire roaring and reaching for another.

She narrows her eyes and runs until they are walking even-paced, shoulder to shoulder.

Cullen looks straight ahead with indomitable focus, rainwater sliding off his chestplate and the tiered guards at his shoulders. They turn on the path between a large camp of bowmen and a section of practice field where the same archers fire arrows, lightning quick, across wet air.

At the start of the path up the mountain, Manon waits in the rain. Cullen gives her a quick nod, and she makes herself scarce. They begin their ascent. Guards still line the path, but they are as good as alone.

Josephine does not look where she goes and steps directly into a puddle, splashing mud up her calves. She does not care. “Do you see,” she says, because she is happy to start this, even though she thinks of the treaty sitting in the locked drawer of her desk, even though she knows better, “why she should have come to us?”

His jaw tenses. “Ambassador, if that is your summation of why we failed, this will be an unpleasant conversation for you.”

“Educate me, then,” she says, a pleasant voice through gritted teeth. “You made so little attempt to speak as the Warden left us, I only assumed you were waiting to tell me what you meant to say.”

“I tried not to fight with you in front of them.” Cullen speaks through gritted teeth. “They already hold a low opinion of us.”

Well—that is sound. “If you had lent your voice to mine,” she argues, “they might have found the terms more agreeable.”

“I tried not to fight with you,” Cullen repeats, “but I could not _lie._ ”

“Lie?” Josephine repeats.

Cullen grinds his teeth. “The things you told her, Ambassador. Surely,” he manages, “you see the impossibility of some of what you ask. Surely part of negotiating terms is aiming high, and then realizing they cannot bend to all you want.”

“That was not a negotiation,” Josephine corrects. “Not for an instant. But, _surely_ , I thank you for the lesson, ser.”

“What was it, then?”

“A disaster.” Cullen snorts, unamused. They agree. She goes on: “It is not a negotiation because _she_ obviously did not view it as such, and if we continue to proclaim it is, they will walk over us every time. As she did today.”

“They are afraid,” he begins.

She holds up a hand. “No,” she says, “no. That was not a conversation with a vulnerable party.”

“The Wardens not show fear in a way that agrees with you,” he tells her, “ but it does not mean they are invulnerable.”

“They are arrogant,” Josephine informs him. “They believe they are untouchable.”

“Survival,” Cullen explains, and she hates his patient tone. “I don’t think nobles get anywhere by acting like a worm under someone’s boot. But I could be wrong.”

Josephine bites her tongue. “This is not the same thing.”

Cullen shrugs. “They are angry and unwilling to compromise.”

“Then they will find themselves beneath the ground, by our hand or no.” Josephine wipes rain away from her eyes. “The sooner they come to terms with their true position, the sooner we will make a solution out of the mess. Or Orlais will find new Wardens. Speed is of the essence.”

He does not say anything. And then, only one pair of feet squelches through the wet mud of the path. Josephine turns, and Cullen stands at the base of the swoop below her. His fingers clench hard around the pommel of his sword. His hair curls and splays, a mess under the assault of the weather.

Cullen looks out at the camps. “How could you say that to her?” he asks simply, voice nearly outmatched by the rain, the low thunder. Water drips down his brow, over his cheeks, onto his coat. Josephine wants to reach forward and smooth away the rain from his pale skin. She folds her hands together instead.

“How?” he repeats, turns his head to face her. He sounds lost. Josephine does not know what to say, half because _too much_ was said to know what holds his fury, his despair. He swallows, but does not look away. “Soldiers know their mortality,” he tries, “we know we are— _dispensable._ Going into battle, a comrade stands behind you with the same sword, the same shield, the same training—to be you. If you fall.”

Josephine crosses her arms and waits. Her silks and velvet are soaked through to the bone, but she will overcome the urge to shiver by will alone. The anger goes a long way to warming her blood. “What did I say?”

Cullen does not find her eyes when he spits the words out. “‘They can make more of you.’”

“It is the truth,” Josephine says simply. “It is—”

“Look at them, Ambassador,” he cuts her off, gesturing to the camp below. “ _Look._ They assemble, train, sweat, and bleed for us. For _you._ Do you understand?” Josephine opens her mouth, but he goes on. “We can always make more. I make more, every time I teach a soldier how to stand in formation, or how to place her feet, or how to swing his axe to cleave a shield. If one falls, more come. _We know._ ”

He exhales. Cullen bristles with anger, so alive with it for a moment he seems untouched by the rain. “We live and breathe it. And yet—yet—you sought to _educate her_.”

“I did no such thing,” Josephine tries.

“A Warden, made to die.”

“You told me they could not be softened or bribed,” Josephine says quietly. “So I did not.”

“You deemed them all without worth instead,” he bites out. His shoulders sag. They stand there in the rain.

She cannot bear this. “Commander,” she says, beckons with her hand. “Come.”

Josephine watches him find it in himself to move, and he strides up the path until they are even with one another again. And then they walk in time, up the hill, as rainwater slides down Josephine’s back.

“I do not have that kind of power,” she informs him. “Our failure was not because I said that.”

“Believe what you will,” Cullen responds, “but you lost her then, if not long before.” He shakes his head.

Josephine clenches her fists. “She needed to hear it,” she maintains. “I do not—I do not mean to erase their sacrifice, but their _actions_ , Commander, have left blood on the ground. And at this point, it does not matter whose blood it is.”

“That much is plain,” he informs her as they round a bend.

“Oh?” She has to raise her voice as thunder lolls again. But perhaps not just because of the thunder. “Is it time for you to accuse me of finding them murderers? I said _nothing_ of the sort.”

“You didn’t _need to,_ ” snarls Cullen. “At least, through that muddled mess, you made that opinion perfectly clear.”

“I cannot simply fall into line and proclaim them without fault.”

Cullen makes a harsh, frustrated noise. “The losses they suffered, did you think of those?” he asks her. “Fifteen Wardens, when their numbers already lie so low.”

“I cast no judgment,” Josephine protests. “Why do you expect me to open my hands and say _yes, and what more?_ to her every demand?”

“Not at all,” he mutters.

“Were you listening to anything I said?” snaps Josephine.

Cullen casts his eyes heavenward. “Of course I was, Ambassador.” he says, “All your talk of their poor choices.Consequences. Oh—how their lives were no longer worth as much as anyone else’s.”

“Tell me what I should have said instead.” Josephine furiously brushes rainwater out of her eyes. The anger serves as an excellent energy for the hike, but the muscles of her calves still burn. They are just halfway up the climb. “You told me to be straightforward, to not coddle, and I did not, but now I earn your ire.”

“No,” he grouses lowly, “I only expected you to _hide_ your disappointment.” He looks like he might continue, but he bites it back.

“Disappointment.” Josephine rolls the word around on her tongue. “At the state of affairs, and the bloodshed—how can I not be?”

He strides forward, shakes his head. His shoulders tense again.

“Commander,” she demands, harder.

“It was,” he tries, and then grinds his teeth. “I could not help—but—she saw it. Plainly.”

The pause lies fraught.

“What?” Josephine asks. “Do not hold it from me, ser.”

Cullen sighs, a frustrated and ragged sound under his breath. “Your disappointment,” he continues, “for they did not all die in pursuit of reformed good.”

A silence, then, broken by a peal of thunder. Maker help her, she will kill him herself.

Josephine whirls on him, as is her wont and her tradition, and loses her footing. She slips in the soft, wet mud. But Cullen is there, and she grasps the wet planes of armor clasped about his arm. He halts immediately so she can find her footing, steady as a statue. Her slippered feet slide back when she tries to stand upright in the mire.

“Hold,” he grunts, and she does. He lifts up, steps forward once, and her feet touch better ground.

“Alright?” he asks. Josephine nods.

The rain above them intensifies—what was heavy before becomes a downpour. What he said comes back, and it curdles everything. She releases him quickly, looks away from his face, from the way the rain trails down his neck.

He turns and takes a few long strides, fumbles for a ring of keys at his belt. He opens one of the bolt-holes lodged along the path. Swans arch their necks and open their wings in flight across the metal strapping.

Cullen leaves the heavy door propped open. The room is crammed with barrels, racks of shields polished to reflection stacked against the wall, and a small table stacked with records of inventory.

The second he is inside, she rounds on him properly with no mud to fumble her. “I said _no such thing._ ”

“Again,” he argues, “you made it clear without the definition."

“There is no reasoning with you,” she tells him, pacing back and forth and away. It irks her to no end how still he stays when they wrestle at each other. Josephine must pace and move and flitter about, but he stays steady as an anchor.

And there is not enough room inside this abominably cramped bolt-hole. He crosses his arms.

“But I don’t know what I suspected from her,” she goes on, and catches her reflection in one of the better-polished shields. “Civility, perhaps. Understanding. A dream and nothing more.”

Her hair is a wild, matted mess from the torrent outside. She begins pulling pins out of her hair with clumsy, cold fingers—they snag and resist, but she does not care. It gives her hands a task.

It takes him a moment to respond, but the pause simmers.

“Are you angry,” Cullen asks, in total disbelief, “because she does not _respect your station?_ ”

“She respects you well enough,” she snaps.

When she turns, fingers running through the black mess of her hair and _pulling_ , Cullen looks pained. His eyes watch her motions, not her face. He squeezes the pommel of his sword. “She understands what I am,” he says.

“Then I do not matter.” The pins make a small pile on the table now. Her hair rests heavy on her shoulders, dripping water over the silk—finally, the cold sinks in. She is soaked to the bone. So is he—he shivers a little, under the armor and the fur.  

Cullen rubs his temple. “ _Ambassador_ ,” he says, “I watched individuals insult you, your family name, and your right to success at the Winter Palace—more than once.”

“And?” she demands.

“It—” Cullen starts, then stops. “You are letting them get to you,” he finally says. “You let her under your skin.”

She unwinds a pair of pins from a braid and yanks them out at the end without feeling. His nostrils flare.

“Ridiculous,” she mutters. “I am not an amateur at her first negotiation table.”

He shrugs. “But you are new to each other.”

“That does not _matter_.” Frustration enough to—well, she already tears at her hair. “If we were in time it would be enough.”

“Why do you care so little for what she has to say?”

“Because she lacks respect for the Inquisition.”

Cullen shakes his head. “But she is no less _true_ ,” he says tersely.

“Truth from savagery.” Josephine mutters wearily, turning away. She plucks another pin. “I will not stand for it.”

“I don’t care,” Cullen snaps, words twisting into a short-tempered snarl, “The Wardens still matter, even if they don’t bloody agree with you.”

Josephine smacks her palm upon the table. The pins jump, and some fall to the floor. _Enough._

The rain continues. They stand in silence.

“I cannot believe you,” she says, ragged, honest—and hurt. It hurts. It is all she can think of to say. “You think I would—rather they die than make mistakes.” Her hand clenches. “I view their lives as mere inconvenience. As paltry.”

It lays ugly between them.

Steps. Heavy boots on the floor. He breaches the space between them—she knows it without looking, no way _not_ to know the sound of him when he moves with care for space and sound. But at the soft creak of leather behind her, she half-turns.

He kneels at her feet. Picks up each pin. Quick, small movements of his gloved fingers. She could count each curl on the golden crown of his head, if she wished.

If Josephine moves, she will shatter it all, perhaps die. So she stands still as stone, and does not even breathe.

Cullen rises to his feet in one slow, fluid motion. She cannot look him in the eye and finds the ground instead, her hands clasped in front of her. He clears his throat; she does nothing.

“Never,” Cullen says, finally, with such raw certainty she must look up, “I— _never,_ Josephine.”

For years in Orlais, Josephine watched duchesses bring men to their knees with a flutter of their eyelashes, a marquis from Val Firmin with salt-and-pepper hair who started a three-year war with a well-placed sideways glance, and bards who gently changed the course of history by catching the right pair of eyes. Mastery of the _look_ is its own kind of magic. Cullen is not a manipulator by any stretch of the imagination; he knows not what he does.

They stand so close, no space afforded by the little room. A droplet of water drips from his hair, disappears into the fur of his coat.

His jaw holds no tension—his lips are no longer pursed in disapproval, but parted, just a little on an exhale. Their soft curves are roughened by the sun. The anger still simmers behind his eyes, but it is put aside. Her knowing this is more important. As though—it will always be more important. The incomprehensibility renders Josephine speechless.

They would rather claw at each other than speak, or even breathe, but convictions bridge them, like linked fingers making a fist.

Josephine should—look away. Yet Josephine does not understand how when Cullen looks at her she feels it as well as a touch. And this time—this time—like warm fingertips on her skin. A broad hand, cupping her jaw, turning her face up and away from darkness.

A bond _stronger_ than rage lies between them. How strange. How—how unexpected.

Cullen looks away, suddenly, shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I meant—Ambassador.” He thrusts his hand forward, a palm full of hair pins.

Josephine takes the pins and briskly deposits them on the table, like the touch burns her fingertips. She swallows and finds the coldness in her voice. This—whatever it is—is not something she can hold now. So she breaks it with her own fist.

“Indeed,” she says. The dullness of her own voice numbs her. “Not you.”

“I know you do not wish they were dead. You think them accountable. I understand it.” He looks down at his hands. It is the same way he seemed that night on the battlements, talking to her of Kinloch. He wants to give voice to what rests on his tongue, wants his words to find a home, accepted and safe between them.

Held, perhaps. Whatever comes: anger, or pain, or despair. But such a thing is impossible. They have broken their own hands.

Instead, he mutters quietly, “I cannot help but shield them.”

Josephine’s eyes flick to his. “But they believe this of me.”

“Yes,” says Cullen simply. A bead of water drips from the tip of his nose.

Josephine wraps her hair up in a simple bun, waterlogged as it is. She can feel the tangles under her fingertips. “That is not my fault.” Pin by pin, she sets everything to rights again.

To rights. As it should be. Should be. _Keep saying it._ As it should be.

His eyes furrow. “So you would change nothing.”

“I have told you before,” she says, “either their pride or our charity will give first.”

Cullen turns on his heel and finds a pry bar, cracking open the top of a barrel. “You don’t understand them,” he tells her, with a grunt of effort, “but I don’t think you want to try.”

Josephine splutters. “You think I am _deliberate_ in spurning them?”

“Aren’t you?” He pulls out a folded blanket, homespun brown. She takes it from him and flaps it open, wrapping it around her shoulders. It smells of woodchips. “You issue orders as though you’ve earned their trust when they’ve no reason to do so.”

“For their own good, they ought,” Josephine mutters.

“They won’t fall in line for you.” Cullen sounds so tired. “Especially not Lysandre. You resort to drastic tactics. You tried to make her afraid. And she’s not afraid of you.”

“The Wardens should be afraid of _something_ ,” Josephine mutters.

“Do you know how alike you both sound?” Cullen snaps.

It makes everything pause. Josephine furrows her brow. “What?” she says lowly.

“A competition,” he says, folding his arms, “to see who can prove the most… effective in their misunderstanding. Who is most victorious in valuing the other the least.” He shakes his head. “Maker, Ambassador, no one wins if you prove right.”

She comes so close to saying it— _the Wardens, or you and I?_ —that her only response is to tighten the blanket around her shoulders and stride past him out into the rain again. If he follows, he follows at a distance, and she does not nod back to the guards that genuflect their heads at each turn. She squelches her way furiously back up the mountain.

~~~

Josephine sits on her bed in her nightgown, brushing out her hair. She looks at the moon through her window, framed by wet rainclouds and it looks back at her with a blank, unamused face. _What did you expect_?

A pile of correspondence sits on her night stand, waiting for her hands. Two of the letters are heavy with coin—more refusals. More refusals.

It can wait a little longer. She will spare fifteen minutes for these thoughts, and no more.

All her pins sit piled on the coverlet. She took each one of them out, careful fingers, and laid them down. Each one, unraveled with gentleness, this time, remains a piece of memory. _The fight. The door. The pins. The look._

With Cullen, everything becomes tiringly definitive.

She runs the brush through her hair again. The fact of the matter is the problems number so high she cannot see the top or the bottom of them. But this is what Josephine does, yes? She does not cut or clear or pull away—she solves.

Here is the problem: he is wrong, frequently. This cannot be emphasized enough. He would rather be struck down than admit _I don’t know_ , even after all this time. There are no other paths to solving the shadow lingering at her back. No one can cut down her enemies like blades of grass. This is subtle, delicate. Cullen is meant for broad strokes, tall walls, decimation. But this requires the smallest of turns, the tiniest of steps—like lace.

Here is the problem: they are no longer capable of collaboration. They cannot remember how to listen to each other—or perhaps they can, but once they recall the mechanisms of how to do so, it is too late, and the earth between them lies barren and scorched. A month ago, they spoke of Inquisition business under the moonlight as… colleagues. No. Companions. Open palms, open hearts. She could have said anything that night, and known it rested only between them.

And it did, didn’t it? When he spoke of his past, it hurt him to do so. When the pain rested on his tongue, when he looked racked by whatever he was holding back, she was ready. As though all their steps had led them to that moment.

She could hold it, whatever came. If it was anger, if it was pain, she could hold it in her hands without letting it touch her. A voice pressing against her heart. In that quiet moment under the moon, with perfect clarity, she reached for whatever was going to slough from his shoulders. She could catch him if he fell. She knew how, now.

And she wanted it. _I can hold you._ A promise.

Now look at them.

Here is the problem: she makes mistakes, mistakes she should see coming miles away. She forgets herself, and forgets what they need to mean to each other, which is very little outside of their professional relationship. ( _But do you not remember the door, Josephine?_ ) They need to be able to _do the work_ , which they cannot do when they are so painfully out of rhythm. And today has made that obvious.

Here is the problem, the problem without reason, the demon with no name: it becomes clearer and clearer to her, as the days wane, as she lives and breathes, that all these warring, contradicting pieces cannot live together inside her. And she cannot leave any of them behind. She can admit it, alone, sitting on the bed with a brush in hand. Looking at the pile of pins. Thinking of it.

Here is the problem: it may be best to leave it all for dead.

Here is the problem: if Josephine does, it will cleave her in two.

~~~

Saluti: _No company from here to Par Vollen would take that contract,_ signora _. Not for that much. Offer me three times the amount, plus a stipend for four more hires, and you’ve a deal. But I don’t think you’ve got that much, if you pardon my saying so. Maybe the Montilyets a hundred years ago could._

~~~

In the morning at the war table, Trevelyan drums her fingers on the map. It sounds like the trill rat-a-tat-tat of a battle drum. Leliana meets her eyes meaningfully—Josephine gives her a nod. She knows what’s coming. The Inquisitor clears her throat.

“So,” she says, “the Wardens.”

The chill in her voice makes the air drop a degree or two. Josephine meets her eyes straight-on.

“We made no head or tail with them, my lady.” Be brief, like tearing off a bandage. Move on, as quickly as you can. “They threatened to leave.”

“I would put little thought to their bluff, Inquisitor,” Cullen comes in, hand resting on the pommel of his sword. “They know there is nowhere else to turn. They are merely… stubborn.”

“Bring them to heel.” The Inquisitor crosses her arms. “What is the problem?”

“The threat is not credible.” Josephine taps her pen to her tablet. “Val Royeaux, the Chantry—they dismiss it all.”

“And you could not convince them of such?”

A long pause. “No,” says Cullen.

Trevelyan casts her eyes down at the map—instant dismissal. The back of Josephine’s neck burns. _Those unaccustomed to failure only have a little while to wait._ Her mother used to say that, nibbling the end of her quill as she finished a letter, satisfied.

“We set out for the Emprise du Lion in three days,” the Inquisitor says, rolling a map piece between her fingers, her tone one of a woman taking matters into her own hands. “I will take three squads of Wardens with me. Dagna has some interesting theories about the Blight and how it can preserve a body against red lyrium.”

Leliana makes an interested _hmmm_ under her breath, a noise of approval. “Dagna’s theory holds weight?”

“We’ve spent a great deal of time discussing it,” Trevelyan says. “And I think we might as well try. The Wardens need out and need watching—Bull tried, Maker bless him, but perhaps under my thumb they will behave.”

She plants the marker—an eye, _the Inquisitor journeys here_ —at the center of the Emprise. Then she waits, her hand delicately suspended over the map, before she reaches and snags a marker of their forces. Trevelyan sets it next to her own.

Cullen tilts his head. “Inquisitor?” he asks.

“You will accompany me,” she says, “to supervise the Wardens, and raid the quarry. You and I both know that’s where Samson’s agents are coming from. We should find evidence aplenty there to point us to his base of operations.”

Josephine grips her tablet.

“Are you sure?” he asks. “There is—well, much I am doing here.” It has unsteadied him too. She can tell. Not out of fear. But he does not wish to leave. Why?

“No,” says Trevelyan. Her voice is so _casual_. It is a guard against anger, Josephine knows, because she taught it to her. Keep your rage a secret when you cannot bite your tongue. Be dismissive. Do not let their disrespect touch you. Do not let your rage touch them. Trevelyan learned well. “You two are no longer useful together.”

If Trevelyan had taken the time to box her ears instead, it would hurt less. But there it lies.

So she simply nods, goes back to her tablet. Cullen says, “Understood. I will make the necessary arrangements.”

Josephine breaks the tip of her pen.

~~~

Leliana catches her, afterwards. The Inquisitor and Cullen stride out, rattling off plans and needed arrangements. She wraps an arm around Josephine’s shoulders like a guide, and does not let her sit behind her desk. Instead they leave, cross the Great Hall, and go upstairs in an effort of separation.

She settles her in the library—Dorian sleeps late, and will not appear for at least half an hour. So she sits Josephine in the elegant high-backed chair, pulls over the footstool, and sits.

Leliana wastes no time. “Josie,” she says, serious as the grave, “what is _happening?_ ”

They speak in Orlesian for privacy, even in the quiet of the hall.

“I don’t know,” is her answer. It is a child’s answer. She takes a deep breath, looks down at the hands folded in her lap. “I wish I could tell you.”

And maybe she could. But it’s not ready to leave her mouth. Not yet. Strange. It is always Josephine, crouched low and taking Leliana’s hands by firelight. Trying to offer comfort to the inconsolable. Leliana’s anger and despair twine together into unfettered steel lining each vein, each bone. Josephine has come to understand it is what someone like her does after enough years of pain, heartbreak, and living through the failure of others. Of being the last woman standing—again, and again. Striving to hear the voice of the Maker, again and again, and met with silence.

“Josie,” murmurs Leliana.

“I don’t know,” she repeats. “They are an abominable trouble, and he and I cannot solve them yet.”

She gives Josephine a sidelong glance. “Because you both cannot stop fighting?”

“Yes.” Josephine tries to think of a way to describe it. “Out of sorts. Out of harmony.”

Leliana regards her. She asks a question to which she must already know the answer. “Is that so far from the everyday?”

“It is,” Josephine says. “Or it was—before.”

“Ah.” Leliana gives her a crooked look, pointed and all knowing. “So—it is true.” Of course Leliana knows what was said at the door. Everyone knows.

“When it works,” she murmurs, “is is—perfect. A marvel.” As strong as the moon’s arc, from dusk to dawn, and just as reliable. Its own light.

“Then—is he worth this?” Leliana prods, but her voice is not dismissive.

Josephine tilts her head. “What do you think?” she asks, all honestly.

“I would say no,” Leliana answers. Her voice holds no vitriol.

She nods slowly, numbly. “All I know,” Josephine says, “is that I have had enough.”

Her voice is ragged on the last word. Enough of the stalemate, the vitriol, the moments of tenderness she cannot deny, the warring factions within her that demand her attention—it is too much. She is already pouring her life from an empty cup.

“I am not you.” Leliana sighs. “I will not be another person telling you how you should feel, how you should think.”

“I should break with him,” Josephine says, and speaking it gives it life. She should feel lighter to have voiced it, having finally loosed a burden heavy as a boulder—but in fact, it takes a crushing weight to hush her traitorous insides, the ones wailing _no, no._

But then Leliana places her hand on her knee. “Do it,” she says. “But only— _only_ —if that is what you want.”

~~~

Leliana had recommended an Inquisition agent long ago—Josephine said _I told you,_ _not the Inquisition_ , and Leliana had snapped _then contract her outside of her duties here, for Andraste’s sake._

Her note comes back empty of gold. Isra, a Carta dwarf turned shadow-cloaked surfacer. _I’ll do it, milady._ The letter is simple. _Some back-up would be nice, if you can find it. But don’t roam all over Thedas. I’ll be fine._

~~~

Early. _Too_ early. Josephine rubs her temples. She has not seen Cullen in two days, and this letter must be written to Alesone in the dead city, and she must figure out what to do with _him._

He leaves tomorrow, and it would be courteous to speak to him before he goes. To say, _she is right, this is broken._ Perhaps she will bring the treaty—she spent a great deal of time the night before poring over it. She added the line:

_The two factions will only meet in the war room, the Commander’s office, or the Ambassador’s office. These will be the only places discussion is allowed._

No more dalliances in bolt-holes.

That had been sometime before the sun rose, before she’d fallen asleep with her quill in her hand. Ink on her bedsheets again. And on her nightdress. And on her face, this morning, before Calla hand pressed a handkerchief into her hand. Maker bless Calla.

“My lady?” Calla is at her shoulder, a sheaf of letters in one hand and a stack of parchment in the other. “I’ve asked someone to bring us some tea up from the kitchens.”

Josephine coughs, as though she was not firmly ensconced in dithering. “These are the trading terms?” she asks mildly.

“Yes.” Calla sets the stack in front of her, flips over the first three pages. “By sea, here.” She pulls up half-way through the stack to a dog-eared page. “And by land, here. These are the approved outposts.” She turns to go.

“Excellent—ah, wait.” Calla comes back to the desk. “A few of these are in Nevarran.”

“Hmm.” She touches a fingertip to her lip, brow furrowed. “ _Red Glen._ His penmanship is terrible.” Calla tilts her head. Josephine makes notes. “ _Hunter’s Rest. Black Junction._ ” She squints. The door opens, shuts—sounds of shuffled feet of the servant with their tea.

Calla chuckles, suddenly. For the first time that day, the corner of Josephine’s mouth turns up. “Something to share?” she asks.

“This place at the fork in the road,” Calla says, “is called _Dragonfoot._ ”

“And this is the one Tevinter wants?” Josephine asks. She nods. “The one Nevarra will not give?” She nods again.

Josephine shakes her head, lips still curled. “They will go to war over a place called _Dragonfoot_ ,” she snorts in disbelief, and Calla laughs, and then there is a clatter, and she can no longer breathe.

Josephine is hauled to her feet, and the servant’s hand grips her necklace into a cinch against her throat—Josephine claws at it—she cannot breathe—there is a knife in her hand—she pulls and metal snaps, breaking against her neck and then she is free with a hoarse yelp and Calla _dives_ across the desk, papers and ink and candles going everywhere.

So quick. The sounds of flesh against flesh, one of them screams—she has never heard Calla scream, she does not know which sound echoes against the stone—and the soft _shkk_ metal slipping through fabric, then skin—the fight is brief. Calla rolls off the dead servant, a dagger in her hand. She must wear it beneath her skirts.

But Calla is bleeding from the nose, and her head lolls back a little—Josephine is beside her in an instant, an arm around her shoulders, propping her up.

“Calla,” she says, over and over.

_Thrum, thrum, thrum._ A golden blade slices through her heavy door until it can be pushed open, and Trevelyan stands, spirit blade in hand. Arram is behind her, and then everything is a flurry. Even days later, she will not be able to place in order the events of what happened, or how her office became filled with people.

Josephine knows Arram lifts Calla away from her—carefully, an arm around her shoulders and an arm behind her knees, and that the Inquisitor must ask Josephine if she is alright only once before she answers. There are other guards in the room now. Leliana and Cullen are there. It’s distant. Fading. But is Calla well?

There is a dead woman on the floor. Varric is there. He prods her with his shoe, mutters something under his breath. A tone in his voice she has never heard before.

The Inquisitor pulls Josephine to her feet and leads her out of the room. At the door’s threshold, Trevelyan turns just briefly to Leliana and Cullen, standing at the fireplace, and hisses _“Find out how they got in._ ”

Josephine makes the mistake of turning her head. Cullen and Leliana exchange a look of what can only be described as _murder_ , a rage rich, deep, untouchable. It twists their faces into pale, hard structures. She can no longer recognize them. She does not want it, does not want it, and even as Trevelyan leads her out of the room and they follow Arram to her quarters, all Josephine can think is— _not for me, please, do not do it, do not do it, not for me._

She does not know what she asks, or if she asks at all, or prays, or pleads. All that matters is—they must not. There is already a dead woman on the floor. There is already a woman bleeding in Arram’s arms. What more must happen today to make it a misery, a failure, a darkness.

~~~

Calla has a sprained arm and a broken nose, which the Inquisitor fixes quickly. She passes her a draught, and Calla sleeps soundly in Trevelyan’s own bed.

Josephine sits on the chaise, hands folded in her lap, and watches. A coldness wraps itself like a knot around her heart. This is her fault. Trevelyan eventually sits next to her.

What happened?” she asks. Josephine tells her the story, small as it is. The servant must have locked the door on her way in, and tried to strangle Josephine with her own necklace, and then drew a knife on her. Calla was on her with speed. It was over very quickly. Trevelyan tells her someone on the outside heard the servant scream, and upon finding the locked door, broke in.

She examines Josephine’s neck. There’s not even a bruise.

“Do you still…” Trevelyan searches for a phrase. “Your current plan to circumvent the House of Repose.”

“I am close,” Josephine says. “I have an agent leaving tomorrow.”

She nods. They sit, and it is quiet.

“I did not think,” she begins, and then stops. “Is that all you need?” she asks, in disbelief. It had not even occurred to her that she would have to fight Trevelyan on this, but it makes sense.

Trevelyan leans back and looks at her. “It is your life,” she says simply.

“But you do not like it.”

“No,” Trevelyan agrees. “Yet there are many things I both dislike and live with.” She adjusts her legs. “I would like a guard inside your office.”

It’s not a question. Josephine will bear it. “Yes,” she says. She will negotiate having the guard stand _just outside_ the door later. Not all of Skyhold needs to know the Inquisition’s diplomatic business.

The way Trevelyan says it implies that it is only the top item on a very long list of things that will change. But perhaps she senses Josephine’s weariness.

“And if you leave the fortress, you will need an escort,” Trevelyan says.

“Of course,” says Josephine. “But there are ample guards on the trail down to the camps.”

Trevelyan squints. “No, never have been,” she corrects. “Just one at the top, and one at the entrance.”

Josephine tilts her head. “Inquisitor,” she says, “when I went down, there were two at every turn. More than I could count on two hands.”

A pause. They realize the _why_ at the same time.

“Ah,” says Trevelyan. “When _you_ went down.”

Josephine does not respond to it, and Trevelyan does not press. But they both know who is responsible.

“Calla,” she says finally, “will be just fine. Certainly due for a pay increase, for protecting the Inquisition’s ambassador.”

Josephine will find a way to make it up to her. If such a thing can be done. Perhaps it can’t. But: a proper way to thank her, for saving her life.

“It is good she acted so quickly,” Trevelyan adds. “We need you.” She pats Josephine’s knee.

“Wardens aside,” Josephine says.

But that almost makes the Inquisitor smile. “Wardens aside.” She looks at her. “Do you think one misstep eradicates all the good that’s come from your hands, Josephine?”

Josephine shakes her head, even if she doesn’t quite believe it.

~~~

Josephine stays perched on Trevelyan’s chaise all day, unwilling to leave Calla’s side. A runner brings her letters and paperwork, and she works. It distracts her from the soft sound of her even, sleeping breathing. From the coldness touching every inch of her insides.

Her second candle runs out and extinguishes itself in the middle of a word. Josephine carefully sets her pen aside. Only now does she register the darkness settled on Skyhold. The moon hides behind the clouds.

She stands, stretching her legs before voyaging down to find another. The two guards stationed at the Inquisitor’s door each nod at her as she passes.

But Josephine turns and goes out the door to the courtyard instead. She doesn’t quite realize where she is until she stands at the stone path in the center, black sky overhead. The air smells clean from all the elfroot Trevelyan insists on planting. It’s quite dark—a few torches are lit around the balcony, but without the moon, the night holds steady.

She walks to the steps leading up to the shelter where Mother Giselle sits on warm mornings and talks to children about the Maker. She bends her knees, sits.

It is quiet. She is alone. It should be a comfort.

It isn’t. She rests her forehead on her knees and breathes. Focuses on each breath, one at a time. She is alive. Calla is alive. Isra will leave tomorrow for the Graves. Cullen will leave tomorrow for the Emprise. She will remain. She will wait.

All these thoughts should bring a taste of peace, or at least an ease to the breath slowly sinking in and out of her lungs, but they bring nothing. That has always been the problem—Josephine has never been skilled at following what she is supposed to feel.

“Ambassador?” The thought jerks her from reverie, and she sits up so quickly that little pricks of light dot the edges of her vision.

Cullen stands on the path at the center of the gardens, framed by the small light the torches cast beyond them. His feet are pointed towards the chapel—was he going, perhaps, to pray? It is past midnight and he is still in all his armor. Perhaps the planning for tomorrow goes rockier than planned. (This, of course, follows the initial shock of _why is he here?_ )

“Did I disturb you?” he asks. “I—are you alright?”

Josephine makes no moves to fill the silence. He takes a step closer.

“I am well,” she says, finally.

Cullen nods. A long quiet again, before he says, “Do you wish to be alone?”

Josephine can see it, as perfectly as any soothsayer. She says _yes, if you please_ and he nods and goes to the chapel. She will watch the candlelight flicker from the crack underneath the door. She will imagine him kneeling there before the presence of Andraste, praying for a safe journey tomorrow, praying for whatever Cullen prays for. (She knows what it looks like, now, when his knees touch the ground.)

He will leave after an hour, and bid her goodnight if she is still here, and go to his office. Perhaps he will sleep, and march out in the morning with the Inquisitor. She will not see him go, she will not see him come back, and they will continue in soft circles of fate that only touch when knocked together by orders from Trevelyan.

But Josephine has had enough.

“No,” she says, quietly, and it is a surprise even to herself.

She watches the word reach across the dark courtyard and touch him, gentle as a hand, and he follows its power with quiet steps.

Josephine slides over a little, though the steps provide ample room. He unbuckles his sword from his waist, leaning the long scabbard against the railing. And then Cullen sits next to her.

“How is Calla?” he asks.

“Asleep,” Josephine tells him. “She broke her nose, hurt her arm. But the Inquisitor tended to her. She will be fine.” She looks at her knees. “She will be fine,” she repeats. Her voice sounds far away.

She touches her neck. The familiar weight of the necklace is gone.

“Trevelyan said you weren’t hurt.”

“Not a scratch,” she says.

“Not a—” His voice dies in his throat. “Good,” he says, after a swallow.

“Did you find…” she begins, and trails off.

“Leliana is handling it,” Cullen says. “We know she started two weeks ago and said she was a refugee from the Dales. She went by the name _Alina._ ”

“I am sure she is connected to the House of Repose,” Josephine says.

He gives a grunt of agreement.

“She will not find much,” Josephine says. “This was… small.”

“Small?” A strain in his voice.

“A meager effort. Like a tap on the shoulder.” Josephine watches the torches. “To tell me _, move quicker, Josephine. You take too long to do what you need to do_.” She gives a half shrug. “A courtesy, almost.”

He makes a choked noise. “I said, ‘almost,’” she repeats.

Cullen doesn’t say anything. She turns her head and looks at him—for the first time since he sat down next to her. It jolts her, the way he looks—haggard, empty, carved out. He stares across the courtyard at the torches. She can see their tiny candle lights glimmer in his eyes.

“There is no one to blame but myself,” she says, matter-of-factly.

“No,” he says.

“Yes,” she counters, frustrated. “If I had been faster. If I had thought through the plan better.”

“What plan?” he inquires, turning his head. And she tells him everything. From the duchess’ letter to the mercenaries’ failure, to her long journey in finally finding someone to retrieve what she needs.

He never says _you should have asked me._ Instead, he says, “What do you need?”

His will is strong and solid, like a stone to lean upon. “I would not send her alone,” Josephine says, after a long pause of thought. “Perhaps someone like Manon…”

“I will see to finding someone,” he promises. “Manon will do well. Your agent will not go alone.”

“Thank you,” she says. It is an easing. In the quiet, she takes a deep breath. “Still,” she murmurs. “It does not change—how this should not have happened.”

Cullen shakes his head. She grasps her knees. “You heard the tale. I made a misstep. The fault lies with me.”

“The fault lies,” he says, a little gently, “with the assassin, who drew a knife upon you.”

“That doesn’t _matter_ ,” she snaps. “It could have been circumvented, or prevented, or a hundred other alternatives that end with no one dead, with no _need_ for blood.”

“Are you afraid?” He asks it as though compelled.

“No,” she snaps, so certainly he winces. “Not of—I do not feel unsafe.”

“Of course,” he says, and it is enough.

“It won’t leave me.” Cullen nods, but he doesn’t understand. Her voice rises on the edge of anger. “Thoughts of her body on the floor, of Calla bleeding all over her dress. I have—” She stops, suddenly, cuts herself off.

Cullen waits. It is his gift. Josephine opens a hand on her knee, flexes her fingers. “I killed a man with this hand,” she tells him, rather matter-of-factly.

He tilts his head to look at her. She looks back at him. There’s no judgment, only steadiness. Well—perhaps a little surprise.

They both look at her hand.

“I was a bard, before I was… myself,” Josephine says. “Like Leliana. I had a patron—a young marquise from new money. I played the Game, and I was—young. Green. And I loved it.” Her voice goes quiet at the end. “It was brilliantly exciting. Something _real_ , finally, after years of books and history and table etiquette.”

She takes a deep breath. “I was a poor entertainer,” she admits, “but there were few in Val Royeaux who could resist telling me a secret. I came home late to my marquise, one night, after one of the empress’ moon-viewing parties. An agent was hiding outside her bedroom on the top floor of her home. We… scuffled, rather precariously, by the back stairs leading to her room.”

Josephine looks at her hand, because if she looks at him she will stop speaking. “He drew a knife on me. I shoved him away. He lost his balance.” Oh, the simplicity of such a small mistake pulls her back to the Wardens. _He forgot his sleeves. He lost his balance._ How the tiniest turn of fate leads to bloodshed.

“I knew him, Cullen,” she says. “I ran to the foot of the stairs and he lay there, just… still. And I pulled off his mask and I knew him.” Her hand draws in on itself. “A passable baritone. Orlesian, from Montsimmard. We studied logic together at the university. He would come and titter with me at parties, after he had too much to drink, and tell off-color jokes.”

“You only defended yourself,” he says, quietly.

“It was a _waste,_ ” she snaps, and her fingers tighten. “An unconscionable waste, and it should be recognized, and I cannot forget it. What he could have done, who he could have _been_ , if only I had said ‘stop,’ or tried to find another way. I would have found it. I would have done anything—”

She halts in the center of her sentence. Cullen gently pries her fingers apart, sliding his between them. As though to say, _stop hurting yourself._ As though to say, _this, this instead._ She did not realize how tightly she was clenching her fist. She grips his gloved hand, solid and warm and steady. He does not let go, no matter how hard she squeezes.

“Josephine,” he says.

“I _know_ ,” she goes on, “I have made my peace with it, and him—I am glad I live, but I cannot let go a wasted life.”

They sit with her words, with the truth of them.

“I did not understand,” Cullen begins, and the whole of the admission encompasses a great deal. He clears his throat, continues. “What I said in your office. And with the Wardens. What I—it is unforgivable.”

“You didn’t know.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he says, with sudden fury, but not at her. “I should not—I should not have to know this, know what you alone choose to tell and keep secret in order to _trust_ your judgment.”

Josephine shakes her head. “You cannot hear what I do not say.”

She looks at their bound hands and takes a breath. “It is my greatest failure,” she says quietly, “to have taken a life.” The world goes quiet between them. She does not know how else to say it. But it is her truth.

“I know no one,” Cullen says, finally, “who could do the same.”

Josephine mutters, almost a scoff. “It is simply necessity.” And that is all.

“This hand,” Cullen murmurs, “is just a hand. You made the choice. How is it—who else comes so close to the knife’s edge, and in response, never touches the blade again? Who has the strength?” He shakes his head. “This hand writes letters, arranges nations. It held Calla’s head today so she would not hit the ground. Once, it pushed a man. It is just a hand. What matters is _you.”_

He opens her fingers so that she is outstretched across his palm, his thumb braced at her fingertips. The small crescent impressions from where her nails pressed sharp into the soft flesh still linger. It has not been a day to regulate habit.

“Just a hand,” he repeats, and she thinks he will close her fingers, hold them again, let her nails bite into the soft leather of the glove instead of her own flesh, as before.

It must be the night. How bleak it is, even in the glow of the torches, under the shadow of such a black day. How near (even if it was, or wasn’t, or was) she came to harm.

In the light, in their offices, across the war table—it would be impossible. But the cradle of night, the fatigue of the day: he does not let go.

Cullen bends his head and raises Josephine’s hand. In between one breath and another, his lips touch the first mark on her palm. He kisses each half-moon, one after the other, until all four have met his breath, brushed feather-light against his lips.

A lump rises hard in her throat. Each touch is a flame, loosening the knot in her chest, unwinding her from the cold, the distance, the solitude. It asks for nothing. It demands nothing of her.

Instead, it—it soothes.  

He wraps their fingers up in each other again, covering her hand between both of his. Josephine reaches and slides her hand around his arm, where he is uncovered by metal and armor just above his elbow. The muscle jumps, flexes under her touch, and then settles.

They hold each other. They listen to the inhale and exhale of each other’s breath.

“I hate fighting with you,” says Josephine, a low murmur rolling unbidden off her tongue. “No. I hate—the warring. Where we draw our arms at each other, not at the problem.”

Cullen looks somewhere else. “I have said what I should not have,” he mutters.

“I have near hated you for it,” Josephine replies. Lunacy. “And I have voiced words like blows—to hurt you, without thought, without cause.”

“In defense.” His voice is still quiet.

“No,” she says. “Not always.” No lies, not here.

Josephine breathes in. “But when we _fight_ ,” she continues, and she cannot stop the warmth creeping underneath her tone, as though the torches seek to light every word, “when we fight, and we _debate_ in pursuit of greater good, when we are trying to build instead of destroy—it is unlike anything I have known.” Her hand grips his, tight as a fist. “I did know it could be so. I did not know it could be better.”

He waits for her. “I have missed it. I have missed _you._ ” Her voice shakes. “With you, I am not the diplomat soothing the Inquisitor, or the ambassador carefully choosing every syllable. I am—”

She steadies herself: the realization rattles her. “I am myself,” she whispers. “I am always myself. But with you, no part of me is silent.”

The stillness, again, as they hear what she’s said, and Josephine presses her lips together, heart thudding.

His turn then, to squeeze her fingers. “I never want you to be,” Cullen rasps. “What you give, I can take.” He swallows. His voice is so quiet. “It is a gift.”

And a promise. That much is clear. It had never occurred to Josephine _he_ could take, with open hands, who she is. Whatever she has. Whatever he can bear—oh. Perhaps he has.

He does not know what to do with the silence. “I meant it,” Cullen says, “what I told you, at your door.”

“I know,” she tells him. “I heard you.” She nods slowly. “I heard—I heard every word.”

It lies between them, but not ugly, not empty. They do not know what to do with it yet. But there is time, where before possibility lay barren.

“We go tomorrow,” he breathes, “but I would not leave you. It was close, today.” He trembles, just a little. “Josephine. It was _close._ ”

A long, drawn out exhale. She strokes her thumb, just once, across his arm, and he tenses and settles again. “I will be well,” she says.

“Not just that,” he mutters. “Only—” Now he grips her hand as he finds whatever broken words lie in him. It hurts, each piece, but this—all the unresolved words, their bitter snappings and leavings—they pause. This is more important. It will always be more important.

“You are never alone in this,” Cullen finally grits out.

“I am not,” says Josephine. “I have you.”

That is the end of talking for a long while. The torches flicker.

“I should not stand between you and the morning,” Josephine finally admits. He shakes his head, but she rises, slowly standing on cold legs. She does not let go of his hand. He picks up his sword and she leads him out of the garden. He ducks his head. She does not have to see him to know with  certainty the back of his neck reddens, and not from the cold. When was the last time someone led him anywhere by the hand?

They walk, slowly, shoulder to shoulder through the great hall, past the long tables where their fellows will break their fast in the morning, past the door to the war room, past the Inquisitor’s throne.

At the door to Trevelyan’s quarters, Josephine pauses, and turns. Her turn, to hold his hand in both of hers. “I must be there when she wakes,” she says, and he nods. “I will not be able to see you and the Inquisitor off.”

He tilts his head. “Of course, ah, Ambassador,” he begins to reassure, rattling back into their titles because they are in the hall, there are guards, they are no longer under the cover of the dark. What else would he do? But then she kisses his hand, and he stops speaking.

It is—quick, just a brief touch, just _you will return whole and safe because I will it_ , her lips against his glove, but when she raises her head he stares, bewildered, wondering.

“Josephine,” she says.

“Yes,” he says, a prayer wound ‘round the syllables. “Josephine.”

And then she releases him, and opens the door, and goes. Her feet take her up the stairs and into the Inquisitor’s dim chambers.

She sits on the edge of the chaise, and sometime before dawn falls asleep. She wakes in the morning to a soft _Is that you, my lady?_ Her eyes open on Calla, sitting up in bed, rubbing her shoulder. She smiles at her, eyes hazy. Calla says, bright as morning, “You are well.”

~~~

_Sister Nightingale,_

_You’ve always asked me to be straight with you, so I will be. You told me to watch the gate for a week, and I did, and I cursed you every day. A sloth demon on his best day couldn’t think of a post more Maker-damned dull._

_This morning, Isra, one of Lady Montilyet’s people, was waiting there even before the sun rose. Dwarf with a gaze like a sharpened knife. Not cold-blooded, just—capable. Got a tattoo of three black lines down her chin, the kind they make with a hot needle. She was obviously waiting for somebody—I thought maybe she was a traitor, waiting to hand off secrets._

_Another Inquisition soldier I didn’t recognize came out—big fellow, not too tall, sword and shield wielder, dressed in the Inquisition standard. Half-plate. They talked for a long while._ _He pulled off his helmet for half a minute and then—I don’t half believe this as I write it—I realized it was the commander. Commander Cullen._

_And I thought—maybe just a look-alike. But then that Tevinter mage came down from the steps, storming over like his tail was on-fire and took him out for a ride, you know? He was snapping at him like he was any old fellow and looking like a put-out peacock. Isra said something that made both of them shut up._

_Wasn’t he supposed to move out with the Inquisitor before dawn this morning? Aren’t they headed to raid the Emprise? I thought they all headed out straight from the camps with the Wardens._

_Then why did all three take the west trail down the mountain? Why are they headed towards the Emerald Graves?_

_I haven’t the faintest. The puzzle is yours._

_—Ritts_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience as I churned this chapter out, and as always, for your feedback.   
> tumblr: klickitats


	13. voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even parted by hundreds of miles, Cullen and Josephine are not without each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the season of thanking, so here goes:  
> Thanks to sunspeared for being the greatest and the best (and for her excellent beta feedback).  
> Art also now exists for this story, which blows my mind: by peterquill and chanterie. Thank you for your beautiful work!  
> And thank you all, as always, for waiting patiently and reading. I appreciate you so much. (Also, this chapter deviates from our normal back-and-forth with some POV transitions. Get excited?)

Cullen battles the Emprise du Lion from the moment Dorian drags him into camp, broken-sutured and bleeding from the head. Trevelyan’s out scouting with her companions, but they manage him into a tent and Dorian scrubs blood and muck out of his robes while a healer delicately stitches up Cullen.

He’s blind with dizziness. “Dorian,” he murmurs, “tell them to quiet down.”

Dorian raises an eyebrow from where he’s digging dried blood out of a leather seam. “Excuse me?”

“Whoever’s playing music outside.” The sound itself scratches under Cullen’s skin. He needs to talk to Trevelyan about camp conduct if this is commonplace—he won’t stand for it. “It’s too loud.”

Dorian’s hands pause in their little motions. “Of course,” he says evenly, and then his fingers begin their work again. “In a moment or two.”

“Who worked on him?” The healer exhales a breath between her teeth.

Dorian sits up straighter. “I did, madam,” he says, tone daring her to pick a fight.

“These stitches are big as doorways,” she tells him matter-of-factly. “You need practice.” Cullen is vaguely aware of her pulling the old stitches out with a pair of forceps, and the tiny, bright notes of sharpness when her needle presses through his flesh, and out, and in, and out.

He doesn’t mind it. The touch of the point, the pain, are bright points of focus. So does the high sound of Dorian’s laugh when the healer asks, nonchalant, “How did you get this, ser?”

“Mystical nonsense,” Dorian tells her. “Unbelievable puffery.”

She’s silent. Cullen’s vaguely aware of the inches of stitching on his head—the way they travel from behind his ear, down his neck. His head pounds. Perhaps each loop of the stitch secures the meat of his brains back inside his skull. 

“Well,” she murmurs, “I hope it was worth it.”

He can feel Dorian turn a pointed glance on him, pointed as the silver needle. But there’s no need. A ragged grin curls at his lips, despite the headache, despite the damnable noise outside.

“Yes,” he says, as steadily as he can manage. 

~~~

Cullen wakes the next morning, hauls himself to his feet by sheer will. The ground undulates beneath him. Putting on his boots takes time, the help of a chair, and a familiar swallowing of bile. He wraps up in his coat and steps out of the tent unarmored—stupid, in enemy territory, even in camp.

The cold braces, runs through him. It’s welcome. They camp adjacent to a nearly abandoned village, by the count of their fires, and at the mouth of a massive frozen river. He wagers the ice goes down six meters, at least. The sun still lies low, cradled in the mountaintops.

The wind blows. A scent catches at his nostrils. The touch of it makes him wrench his head to the side, snapping to attention. Old habit.

It lies not ten steps from where he stands.

Lyrium, charred red and burning from within. Twice as tall as a man. This outcropping blooms straight up, the way dawnstone shoots out of cavesides, and crackles like a live fire. Waves snake around the tips, hazy tendrils—they stretch wide, grasping for purchase on the land.

The stuff of nightmares, made flesh. The air hums with the scent of hot copper and clean offal washed out from inside a lamb. A roiling smell to clench at the throat. Blue lyrium is sharp, peppermint and ozone and lye, a concoction to scour you from inside out. The red—Meredith’s office in the morning, sunrise creeping through her window, the light from her sword-stand a dim crimson, _Knight-Captain, it appears your focus this morning has found another commander to serve._ But he could not draw away from how her office seemed to fill with blood, how even his armor stained dull red in the light. An after-battle smell, when the blood grows crusty on your scalp, reeks inside your nostrils.

Each inhale is a pulse of white headache, a pull at the stem of his brain. A little panic. He can be honest. Half-panic.

“Steady,” says Dorian, out of nowhere, suddenly at his side.

Cullen folds his arms, looks pointedly at the river. “Quite.” 

He makes a disbelieving sound, but crouches down near Cullen’s legs to continue buckling up his peculiar Tevene boots. He’s wrapped in a cloak of heavy brown velvet. The hem puddles in the snow around him.

“Why are we camped so near it?” Cullen demands. “Surely—“

And then Cullen cuts himself off. There is no spot _not_ near the stuff. Otherwise they never would make base so close.

“The music,” he says simply.

Dorian nods, straightens. He eyes the tall sprout of red lyrium Cullen refuses to look at, instead choosing to gaze at how water spurts from the top of the fall, and freezes before it touches the river below.

“And here I thought,” Dorian says, “we’d been past the worst.”

Cullen shrugs. “Giants are killable.”

“No.” He tugs his cloak more firmly about his shoulders. “I was thinking of when we dragged you through the streets of Val Royeaux. I’ve heard unweaned babies wail less.”

“You’ve never held a babe in your life,” says Cullen.

“No,” Dorian agrees, “but now I’ve certainly heard one.”

He does concern in his own, strange way: teasing, of course, that covers what he wants to say— _you never should have come here._ They both know it, after all. Why mention it?

The lyrium prickles at his back, electric as any stare, when he turns to go inside. He needs to find his armor.

 

* * *

 

Even without Cullen and Trevelyan at the war table, Josephine’s candles begin and end business.

Wind whistles through Skyhold, guttering candlelight and hearth fire alike. Josephine takes refuge behind the heavy doors of the war room, lighting clusters of tall lights. She sits, legs curled under her and hunched over her tablet in a chair dragged from her office. Leliana occupies the other side of the map, similarly dragged from the rookery.

A long night awaits. At least they will be warm.

 “Did you speak to Cassandra today?” Josephine asks, her quill pausing. 

Leliana nods. “She knows she is the Chantry’s second candidate.” A pause. “I did not relish the task. Her reaction was—uncertain.” 

Cassandra relies on her certainty just as she relies on her shield. It is not good news. Josephine sits back in her chair, eyes the door. “I cannot imagine her as the Divine,” she confesses, and Leliana tilts her head in question. 

The Chantry, finally ready to welcome their new _Most Holy_. Their first choice had been Vivienne—of course it was, after a mage Inquisitor roamed freely across Thedas and gave all mages free quarter under Skyhold’s roof. Vivienne represents order, a touchstone to the old ways. A mage Divine. The thought is astonishing, and a startlingly progressive one for an institution as entrenched as the Chantry. Vivienne’s political beliefs make her an obvious choice for change and not-quite-change. 

“Not on account of her performance,” Josephine adds, suddenly, in case it needs to be said. “The Chantry would kneel at her feet. And a moderate choice, one to unite Thedas.” Vivienne would not be as conservative as the Chantry would hope she would be, but is perhaps the most assured choice. Cassandra would do as she pleased.

“Then why?” Leliana rests her chin on her hand.

“She would be miserable,” Josephine admits. “You cannot think bureaucracy is Cassandra’s strength.”

“Don’t underestimate her.” Leliana picks up her pen. “That’s twice as dangerous.”

“It’s not a question of her skill,” Josephine repeats, “but… she’s happy. Here. Like this.” Tromping across Thedas with Trevelyan, sword in hand, the greatest fighter since the Blessed Age. Josephine cannot imagine her in the Divine’s robes, cannot imagine leading the Chantry is a task she would ever want.

She would take it, yes. She would bear it admirably. But it would be just that: borne.

“Justinia loved her,” Leliana points out. “She is the noblest choice. Who else would stand?”

Josephine stares at Leliana—Left Hand of the Divine, companion to the Hero of Ferelden, her dearest friend, the pinnacle of sacrifice for the Chantry.

“Leliana,” she says, “ _you._ ”

They stare at each other, and Josephine realizes the thought has never crossed Leliana’s mind. She watches it flit across her face—hope, for a moment, and then the firm extinguishment of such an idea. Josephine is wrong: Leliana has thought of this before, yes, and squashed any notion of it under her boot. 

“It will never happen,” Leliana says, without emotion, and goes back to her letter. The conversation is suddenly over.  Josephine watches the crown of her head, her dark hood pushed back on her shoulders.

She drops her head and finds where she left off on the parchment. 

“What does Laurien have to say?” Leliana asks, a little suddenly. 

“Hmm?” Josephine is not paying attention. “I’m not writing to Laurien.” Although she should. But an entire month after the fact, her hands still when she attempts to write about the conversation with Cullen in the garden.

It’s not a secret, not exactly. Secrets are pieces of shame, or stones to begin marking the future, or a place in-between. And this remains neither. They were—vows. An archaic word for what is very new, and warm, and more important than a promise.

Josephine makes promises every day that she doesn’t intend to keep—to suppliers, to ambassadors, in letters to kings and queens and Carta ringleaders. That is the beginning of negotiation. Promises change. They alter themselves at the behest of either party, a natural evolution. That is the beauty of them at heart. 

But this.

The silence is long enough Josephine eventually looks up. Leliana’s gaze is pointed as an arrow. She only has to raise an eyebrow to make Josephine flush.

“I am only writing to him about the Wardens,” she murmurs, ducking her head.

Leliana’s lips purse a little—not out of disapproval. It’s the face Leliana makes when she doesn’t want to smile, but must betray at least a little of her amusement. “About your disaster?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She stretches in her chair. “It was too brief to be a disaster.”

“A run-in,” Leliana attempts. “A bloody skirmish.”

Josephine returned from the camps in the morning to find correspondence _en masse_ after several empty days of pithy trifle. Missives from Val Royeaux—the news of Cassandra’s candidacy—and demands from Nevarra, and the first wave of reports from the Emprise.

There is too much to do. Josephine must dispatch the first wave of caravans with bread, blankets, and bandages by tomorrow afternoon. The snow in the passes makes travel slow, slower than she’s ever been used to, and of course time is of the essence. Trevelyan’s reports remain short, to the point, and rather explicit about the rapidly deteriorating quality of life in the Orlesian highlands.

Her correspondence with Trevelyan is done, and now—she must finish this letter to Cullen, so it might be taken on the morrow into the Emprise.

“Is that all you write about?” Leliana’s voice is just a hair too casual. 

“The bulk.” It’s not a lie. “He will want to know of my latest defeat at Lysandre’s hands.”

A chuckle, then, soft and dry. “Leave space for the rest of what you mean to say,” Leliana advises.

“Thank you kindly,” says Josephine, prim, “but I can write a letter.”

Her pen pauses on the page, pauses until she senses Leliana no longer spares her much attention. This next moment—requires intimacy, and she must word it perfectly.

They have built a delicate bridge between them. Not precarious—not like before, when every step was a treading into uncertainty, and misunderstanding, and snapping, and accusations. Josephine is no fawning, insipid flower: no lover would accuse her of shyness, no foe would accuse her of hesitation. But a tenderness has fallen into Josephine’s hands, and she treats it with the careful touch and slowness it deserves.

Nothing else is acceptable.

It takes just another moment, another soft inhale of breath, before her hands remember their calling, and the pen touches the parchment again. Josephine writes, and writes, and writes.  

 

* * *

 

It’s only the beginning of a simple fact: the Emprise means to bring Cullen low.

He combats it by thinking of words like _penance_ and _prayer made flesh_ and _a test sent down by the Maker_ and it helps, some. At night, when he shivers under four blankets and a fur, he makes maps in his head, battle plans where a single man fights three enemies. 

The first is the situation’s distinctly Orlesian quality. Like the rest of Orlais, the Emprise is a tattered mess of half-burned out villages. This part of the country is sparsely inhabited, and the common tongue is no longer common, and the grudges of the land and the people run deep. There is little the Inquisition can solve here that isn’t physical: they will rebuild bridges, walls, destroy the hold of Corypheus’ forces. They order emergency food supplies to come in from Ferelden, through secure mountain passages manned by their own people. But the effects of the civil war will not abate. Sahrinia, the village they camp nearest, lays empty in part because of men and women snatched from the fields, or put to the knife by Freemen and bandits, or drafted into the civil war’s service on the spot.

Cullen learns of the latter when a weary farmer travels into the village for news to see if anyone can spare a shoe for his horse, hands pushed far into the threadbare pockets of his coat. He eyes Cullen’s armor, asks him who he is. He answers without thinking—Commander Cullen, come from the Inquisition—the farmer pulls a knife on him, and Cullen only just catches his wrist before it slides hilt-deep into the soft part of his shoulder.

It takes—talking, and Cullen grabbing an a nearby Inquisition archer with only a passable understanding of Orlesian to make sense of the mess, but Cullen learns the last commander who waltzed through the Emprise did not even stop at the village—simply went to the fields, carted away every able-bodied man and woman they could find.

Cullen regards the man and asks, “And you? Why did they not draft you along?”

This needs no interpretation; the farmer pulls his other hand out of his pocket. It is not a hand, but a clean stump.

“Chopping wood,” he says. “I had children. I had to stay.” And then he shrugs.

Cullen gives him back his knife, and sets him off with four iron horseshoes, one for each sentence and the shrug.

All this, all this before the Red Templars and the uncharitable winter entered the picture.

The Red Templars remain their own piece of the problem—they overrun the countryside, merciless, vile, mindless ants. They take time to put down, their blades edged with the keen need of survival—some part of them knows this is their last chance at life, and they don’t go down quietly.

“Break Drakon’s Rise,” Trevelyan says, gesturing to the maze of caves that eventually leads to a well-secluded valley, high points for scouting. “I’m going downriver.”

Cullen says _yes, Inquisitor_ and breaks Drakon’s Rise.

It brings new discoveries. The Red Templars now wear faces.

They are no longer just the gnarled, stony giants lumbering towards them out of the snow at Haven, arms sharp and red, or behemoths of legend. The Emprise holds these forces in high supply, but the infantry—the sword fodder—is men and women, just as they are.

They dress in dark robes and slitted helmets, fitted with shields and bows bearing the sign of the Elder One. Cullen pulls his sword out of an archer’s belly and pushes his helmet off with the tip of his sword. A man’s face gazes back at him, muscles lazy with death.

He mustn’t think of it. He mustn’t, even when Dorian taps him gingerly with his staff and he nearly drops his sword. He mustn’t, even when he lays in bed and the face stares down at him from memory. How he was just a man, not a monster, and now lies dead.

 _Samson is just a man_ , says a voice in the back of his mind. _Even a man cloaked in red lyrium is still a man._

Cullen puts those thoughts from his mind. He cannot dwell on Samson, not when every holding they capture is another step ever-closer. It will cripple him, otherwise. And that is that.

The last piece of the puzzle is this: Cullen is constantly ill. 

It is his fault, naturally. He read the reports, assigned troops to the Emprise with stern and brief rotation to preserve their health and their sanity, knew the terrain well. That is, he knew about the red lyrium bursting out of the snow at every turn.

It is a substantial portion of why he did not want to come. How he knows this is punishment. Trevelyan’s justice is swift, and Cullen has been a trial. When she walked into his office with a list of plans for his departure, a map dotted with the many places where Samson’s information was coming from, and the gleam of discovery in her eyes… the last thing Cullen could say was _might be ill, Inquisitor, can’t make it._

So he is sick, sick as a dog: unable to eat most meals, other than choking down water, diluted spirits, occasionally broth, barley, porridge. He takes all his meals alone for a total of three days before Dorian notices and never lets him do so again, even when Cullen can only drink half a cup of tea before it comes back up into an ever-present bucket tucked under the table, sputtering bile.

Dorian can’t heal small things like this—he tried crafting a tincture once and tried it on himself before Cullen and, well, the subsequent rash proved evidence enough. If Cullen suffered from a problem of time being twisted in the void, Dorian’s vast landscape of scholarly knowledge would prove more useful. But he does what he can. He burns herbs in the tent. Elfroot, sage, a white and silver grass he gathers by the village to exorcise the smell. Cullen staggers into his tent pole one morning attempting to dress himself, and then goes dizzy while marking trails with a band of Wardens.  So Dorian obtains smelling salts for when his equilibrium shakes, small enough to keep in his pocket.

Cullen stops dreaming.

Not because the Emprise wrings him out like a dishrag. Not because he doesn’t sleep much. He stops dreaming because the nightmares breathe, winged and waking, at every turn.

He becomes accustomed to the voices whispering in his ears when he wakes in the morning. When hands, invisible and heavy, touch his arms, his neck. It is always worse when he is alone.

Cullen unsheathes his sword and goes out to fight because the required focus pushes itdown, stronger than anything but the Maker’s hand. The thoughts go away, the music tickling in his brain, his shaking hands, the stomach twisted into knot after knot. The smell of his own blood and sweat even pushes away the lyrium’s creeping fumes. For a time. For a time.

When he drags himself back to his tent, it comes crashing back down in the fading over-exertion. He will take it.

The only thing he prefers about it is the cold. It keeps him sharp.

Dorian sticks to him like an errant burr.

~~~

A month in the Emprise heralds the return of one of the worst symptoms. His head pounds so deeply words blur on the page. He can compensate, most of the time—it’s not odd at all for the Commander of the Inquisition to dictate a letter to a clerk, or to have some missive or other read aloud to him. Most of them are short and so his utter focus on each word remains unremarkable.

It only presents a problem when a certain letter arrives, addressed to him in a tiny, flowing, messy hand, bearing the wax seal _J. M._

Josephine’s handwriting—despite his head, he can just make out the cramped swoops and whorls of her words—is so small he cannot even read his name on the outside of the letter.

Trevelyan drops it on top of the stack in his hand. “This got mixed in with mine,” she informs him. “Letter from Josephine.”

“Oh,” he says.

“Indeed,” she says.

They both stand there as Cullen carefully slides the letter between the handfuls he already carries.

“Cullen,” Trevelyan begins, circling a finger, “is this business…”

“Taken care of,” he reassures. “On my word.”

Trevelyan only raises an eyebrow and goes, leaving Cullen with his correspondence.

But he cannot read it. He takes it back to his tent, and it rests on the little table next to his pallet. A day passes, and then another. A week.

In the dark of night, his eyes find it, and he inhales a breath of hope.  

After all, night’s darkness provides a dizzying contradiction—if he could go without sleep for the rest of his life, he’d choose it. But night is the only time for peace, for quiet in the camp, and the cold and clear air of the Emprise is good for his stomach, even if the lyrium runs its teeth over the rest of him.

And night is the time when he allows himself to think of—Skyhold.

Yes. Just so.

If he wakes with the memory of a soft palm against his mouth, warm on his breath, then it is only that. The scent of elfroot and felandaris from the garden, torches burning. Fingers clenching his, the give of his leather gloves as nails pressed into him. Bound. The proper word for it.

If he looks at his hand, if his fingers curl as though remembering being held, raised, and touched—by lips—and his heart begins thudding against his ribs, and he must move to begin the day, or his legs will keep him there, then it is mere coincidence.

  

* * *

 

 Varric appears just as Josephine’s leaving to head down to her appointment. Calla helps her into her coat.

“Ruffles,” he entreats, a bow at the threshold of her door. “Let me come with you. Give Briony a break.”

Ser Briony, a Templar knight-captain turned Inquisition agent and Josephine’s new constant companion, coughs gently in the hallway outside. Tall in plain silver armor, a scar lining the strong cut of her jaw and one to match across her nose, hair shorn to the scalp. Josephine appreciates her silence. It is a livable compromise for the moment. What she appreciates about her most is that she watches Calla as closely as she watches Josephine herself. An act of great fortune—a sword big enough to satisfy Cullen’s overwrought ideas of protection, a reputable skill in dueling and lean quickness for Leliana’s approval, and utterly, utterly quiet for Josephine’s purposes. At least for now.

More than once, she opens the door to the little passageway leading to her office to find Calla already there, leaning up against the brick and talking with Ser Briony in soft tones after setting a tea service on Josephine’s desk. Apparently both their families crossed the sea in the middle of the Storm Age because of the Exalted March against Rivain, although Calla ended up in Orlais and Ser Briony found her way to the Inquisition from Highever.

(In fact, two mornings ago, Josephine blearily opened the door to the little passageway leading to her office in the middle of Ser Briony—not laughing, it’s too much of a word—but chortling, perhaps. A husky, rusty rasp of a sound, her head turned into the gorget of her armor, and Calla, biting her lip with contained amusement, eyes dancing.)

Josephine considers this. “It is rather cold,” she allows. “But the path is well-guarded.”

“I’ll walk you to the trail,” Ser Briony answers, nodding, and does so—taking a post at the top of the hill and standing there, solid as a statue. Undoubtedly, she will wait there until Josephine returns.

“So,” says Varric, as they begin rounding the path, a path still lined with too many guards. Josephine’s still puzzled at how she didn’t notice it the first time. “You gotta tell me—which bolt-hole?”

“Which—?” Josephine slides her hands into her pockets. “Varric. No.”

“Inquiring minds want to know,” he says, with a little grin. “I just want to know how much blood is on the walls.”

It, of course, makes sense a rumor has sprouted from this—after all, the path was lined with a captive audience both she and Cullen completely forgot was present.

It does not help that Varric’s question recalls the memory with sudden detail and intensity. Josephine’s memory is tireless—it is her calling, after all, to mark the turns and leanings of every diplomatic negotiation, even if the dealings entail both parties soaked to the skin and shouting at each other in a bolt-hole filled with military supplies.

How embarrassing. Yet, that emotion only colors the surface of what she remembers. It is a way to explain the flush that makes its languid way up her spine. Mostly, the way he knelt at her feet. So close his head could touch her knees. But his precision precedes him, even in the smallest of movements.

And how he looked at her—a look Josephine has memorized unwillingly—a look so heartfelt it longs to touch, with such strange warmth it nearly breaches the distance of its own accord.

When they do pass the door with immaculate swans carved into the iron, Josephine makes sure she does not give it even a passing glance.

“You know that _blood on the walls_ is not my chosen mode of operation,” she reminds gently.

“I figured that for Curly you’d make an exception to that rule.”

“Never,” Josephine says. “Every fool deserves a little mercy.”

A little silence as they round another turn, another patch of guards in the snow with their pikes.

 “I was thinking,” Varric says, “it’s been a whole year. Did you know that?

A year since—oh. Since Cullen declared her efforts as useful as playing with dolls. The coldness of that does wonders to dispel her own sentiment, even if it is not as sharp as it used to be.

“I,” Josephine begins, taken aback by the fact. “I suppose you’re right. A whole year.” More than, even.

“You need a name for your conflict,” Varric tells her, crossing his arms. “Every good war has a great name. Something suitably Orlesian. _The Grand Argument._ ”

Josephine laughs. “ _An Exalted Debate._ ”

“That’s the spirit.” Varric looks up at the sky, ripe with heavy gray clouds for snow. “But you manage a stalemate every so often.”

 _We even dance, on occasion._ “We find peace,” Josephine says, “when it suits us.” They are still learning, with unbearable slowness, how to do it.

“It’s not a thing that lasts, does it?” Varric says. “I guess some things just aren’t meant between people.”

“What do you mean?” Josephine tilts her head.

“I mean, I don’t know,” he drawls. “I don’t think squabblers make good pairs, friends or otherwise. Always snapping, always trying to needle out weaknesses and giving someone a knock right where it hurts the most—you know?”

“You make it sound so cruel.” They turn on the last piece of the path down the mountain, heading out into the wide field of the Inquisition’s military camps.

“I think it might be.” Varric shoves his hands in his pockets. “I don’t think that idiom really holds much water—all’s fair between hearts and swords and whatnot.” He shrugs. “Everyone has limits.”

“So learn the limits.” Josephine’s voice is careful, despite how her hackles raise. What a silly conversation to have. “Find what you can touch, and what you can’t—and that’s not even the most important part.”

Varric squints up at her, and she sighs. “Once you learn _why_ you can’t, Varric, it completes the picture. That’s negotiations—it’s not good enough to know the rules, the boundaries between lands. You have to know the history, why they exist, why they are fiercely protected—why they are what they are.”

He doesn’t look convinced. “Maybe that works for countries,” he says, “but I think people are a little more complicated.”

“Of course it works for people.” She tugs at the fastenings of her gloves. “It just takes time, like anything else.”

“I don’t know,” he concedes, just slightly. “It sounds like an awful lot of conflict just to get somewhere you don’t even know is worth the struggle.” They duck around a squad of archers lugging baskets of newly fletched arrows. “And even then, who’s to say that peace is going to stick around?”

“It doesn’t have to,” she says, searching for the marker she knows marks Lysandre’s tent. “Peace takes the form of whatever it needs to take.”

“Ruffles,” he says, with an extra dose of seriousness, “You can’t tell me that’s a sustainable connection between two—of anything. Countries. People. Whatever.”  

There’s the marker, and just in time. She’s quite done with this veiled scolding. “Love is not _agreement_ ,” Josephine sighs, a little short. “What a dull and spiritless notion it would be, if it were.”

Varric doesn’t say anything—she turns her head and he’s looking up at her with a toothy, goading grin, wide as can be, like it’s his name day and Wintersend and Satinalia all at once.

 “I have an appointment,” says Josephine, and turns to open the flap of Lysandre’s tent.

 

* * *

 

Cullen’s first tasks in the Emprise were to figure out the lay of the land: each benchmark is another wave of forces, protecting the center. As he explained to Trevelyan, Corypheus’ forces have turned the land itself into layers of a fortress, using every outcropping of rock, every valley and cliff as benchmarks to the core of their operation.

Trevelyan takes this to heart, setting an intensive schedule of sieges she tenderly calls, “a winter cleaning.”

This means a week after overtaking Drakon’s Rise, the Inquisitor wants to use the moment to strike against the Tower of Bone. The Tower casts a long shadow over the rubble, speared with spikes of red. “When that thing falls,” she says, squinting at it over the fire like a washerwoman stares at a stubborn stain, “it’ll do wonders for morale.

“You cannot go,” says Dorian at breakfast, watching Cullen’s hands. He’s managed a little porridge.

He blinks. “What?”

“You cannot go,” he says again, as though Cullen were a rowdy child. “I’m no healer, but you went out yesterday to clear the valley and obviously did not sleep or eat, and you—you look like death itself.”

Cullen’s fingers clench around his cup. “You’re right.” When Dorian narrows his gaze, he bites out, “You’re no healer.” 

Dorian tilts his head, eyes veiled in a thin disappointment so like Josephine’s it makes the breath shrivel up in his lungs.

“Don’t be a child,” Dorian says, but it’s too late.

“I can’t,” argues Cullen. “They’re my order. Or—were. My responsibility.” His stare narrows. “I won’t leave it up to chance. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Of course not.” Dorian folds his hands in his lap. “I wouldn’t know anything about betrayal of country, or—countrymen, in this case. Nothing at all.”

Cullen stands up too quickly in an attempt to leave. The ground roils and he manages to grab the edge of the table as he doubles over, vomits.

~~~

He means to apologize – he does, truly. But he does not see Dorian for a while.

Two days later, Cullen retires early to his tent—his stomach is too rebellious to make sitting at his makeshift desk an obtainable reality for any longer. This is true frequently, but today most of the camp lies empty, having gone out to the village with Trevelyan to help with repairs. No one will see him retire for an hour or two. He fumbles his plate onto to the stand, rests his sword and shield, and rolls into his cot.

He slides his hand underneath his pillow. The parchment is soft from touch, one of the corners folded over from its hiding place. Cullen holds the letter in hand above his head. It taunts, comforts in equal measure.

And then Dorian clears his throat outside. “May I?”

Cullen shoves the letter under the pillow. “Come in,” he calls, rearranging himself under the blanket.

Dorian enters with a finger-sized flask of green glass. “I know you don’t _take_ things,” he says, “but you should take this.” 

“I’ll be fine,” Cullen says. It’s a practiced routine by now, the push and pull that isn’t really either.

“Sit up,” Dorian commands. “It’s just elfroot and a pinch of dawn lotus.” When Cullen eyes it suspiciously, he sighs. “Solas made it. You will not die.”

Cullen props himself up on his elbow, takes the flask. It smells tart. He closes his eyes and tips it onto his tongue—sour, but no worse than his own bile. It sends a chill from throat to stomach: his headache stays strong, but it’s better than mountain air.

He opens his eyes, and there is Dorian, sitting on the floor next to the cot, legs crossed, examining the letter.  

 “Well, well,” he says, stretching, “This will give everyone more to ramble about.”

“Dorian,” Cullen says.

“The last count, as far as servant and soldier are concerned, is the Inquisition’s Commander and Ambassador nearly mauled each other to death in one of the military bolt-holes.” He twists his moustache. “And now she sends him letters with her personal seal. _Très scandaleux._ ”

Cullen extends a hand. “That is mine.”

“You received this days ago.” Not a question. He grunts, opens and closes his hand.

“What do you hope to accomplish by keeping it under your pillow?” Dorian wonders aloud. “Manhandle it too much and you’ll make the ink inside run.”

“How is this your concern?”

Dorian ignores him, turns the letter over. “Not even in the name of the Inquisition? What if you’ve missed something terribly important?”

That thought had nagged at Cullen too, but he shakes his head. “The seal,” he reminds.

“Perhaps,” he agrees, looking at the front again.

“Dorian,” says Cullen. “Please don’t.”

The air is still. Dorian places the letter back in his hand.

“I went to the Graves with you,” he says pointedly, seriously. The look Dorian gives communicates it clearer than any phrase. Cullen looks down. “Yesterday morning you vomited up gruel on my boot. Do you think I would mock you now?”

Cullen hesitates too long—Dorian blinks, and a wave of shame runs through him.

He takes half a breath and raises his hand, offers the letter again. “I would appreciate it,” he says, finally. It is as close to an apology as he will get, and for a moment, he thinks Dorian will refuse. It is his right, after all. Cullen is abominable.

But Dorian rises, goes to the desk and finds a letter opener. Cullen watches the little blade make the careful cut across the parchment, and his heart leaps into his throat. He lays back down on his side. Dorian pretends not to notice, and comes back to the cot, curling his legs under him as he pulls the letter from the envelope.

“Maker,” says Dorian. He holds up the letter—every inch is covered in her writing, not a breath’s worth of space to spare. Cullen cannot read a single word, but the picture is—it is like being caught in her presence, always talking at a ten-mile stride, always at a flutter, hands moving, pacing, ideas at every turn.

And now, by a strange work of mercy, he can hold it in his hands. 

Cullen drops his head to rest on the pillow.

Dorian clears his throat. “Shall I read it in my best imitation?” He grins at Cullen’s glowering, and says, “ _Twentieth of Haring, 9:42 Dragon. Dear Cullen, Skyhold is well, and quite cold, and so am I._ ” And a few nerves unknot themselves in his belly.

Then he reads, “ _I spoke to Lysandre._ ”

At this, Cullen groans and rolls onto his back. Dorian laughs. “ _I found her in her tent and brought her a letter I wrote to the Empress on behalf of the Wardens._ ” 

He covers his eyes with a hand. “Maker’s breath.”

“ _Lysandre said, and I quote, ‘better to have brought a knife, my lady, than a pen. You might cut my hand and let me bleed upon the page, so Celene can be assured we will still shed blighted blood for her ignorant country.’”_ Dorian whistles.

“She didn’t sign it,” Cullen mutters.

“ _She did not deign to sign the letter_ ,” reads Dorian.

 

* * *

 

 “So,” Lysandre says, tipping her head up to look at Josephine. “You’ve discovered I am not fond of ambushes.”

Josephine stands at the threshold of the tent, hands clasped in front of her. “I have,” she says. “I come to make peace. And apologize.”

Lysandre only raises an eyebrow. “And to have me sign your missive to the Empress.”

“No.” Josephine takes a step forward, opens her hands. “I brought nothing today but myself.”

Good soldiers make no business out of hiding their reactions, their emotions—except surprise. Josephine has learned this. So when Lysandre does nothing but motion to a chair, the smallest spark of hope kindles. But Josephine gives it no quarter. It can all go so quickly. 

Josephine sits, waits. She has made a vow not to command the conversation.

Lysandre says, “You have never asked why I became a warden.”

It certainly wasn’t what she expected Lysandre to say. Josephine crosses her legs. “I know Wardens are often conscripted,” she says, because she has used Blackwall’s treaties to the utmost. The old language in them has a power that transcends time—nobles bent to it. With a sigh, yes, but they bent. Strange. “From anywhere and everywhere.”

She snorts. “How delicate.” Josephine glances at her mage staff, leaning ever-presently against her chair. The scythe-tip gleams in the candlelight. “Anywhere and everywhere. Brothels, dungeons, battlefields. Refugee camps. The palaces of the Empress.”

“And you?” Josephine asks, because Lysandre wants her to ask.

Lysandre leans back in her chair, folds her hands in her lap. “I became a Warden just after I turned seventeen.”

“So young,” Josephine says, without thinking, but Lysandre nods. “Too young to conscript, perhaps. You volunteered.”

“There are no guidelines about age in the Wardens,” Lysandre says with a shrug. “We attempt to rob babes from their schoolrooms, not their cradles.” She raises her eyebrow. “But yes. I volunteered.”

Josephine considers Lysandre—the peculiar, elegant tilt of her head, the even, unflinching countenance of her voice. How neatly her hair sits in its coif, meticulous and lovely.

All signs of _breeding_ , Josephine thinks, and crosses her legs. “A new life, perhaps?” It’s Lysandre’s turn to examine her. “I would say to leave a Circle, but—“

“I don’t have that _kneeling attitude_ , do I?” Lysandre almost smiles.

Josephine shakes her head, thinking of proud Vivienne and her utter distaste for so much. “Circle mages come in many types,” she reminds, and she can see Lysandre restrain from rolling her eyes. Well. “A different kind of bondage, then. A noble house.”

Lysandre’s fingers pause, just slightly, in their tattoo on the table. “A noble house,” Josephine repeats, “Not a high one.” She takes a breath. “Low, but ambitious.” An emphasis on presentation above all else, when there is no substance to back it up. It explains Lysandre’s impeccable hair, incredible posture, the way not even a hint of dirt makes its home under her nails.

Josephine inclines her head to meet iron-hard eyes, and suppresses the flutter of victory in her stomach. “The oldest, I think,” she ventures.

Lysandre blinks. It is as good as a gasp. But she only tilts her head gently, asking for an explanation without words.

“I am the oldest,” Josephine admits. “I find I quickly recognize others by their nature to do everything perfectly and totally alone.”

And now—despite the gains in ground—she only leans back against her chair, folds her hands across her lap. It is all true, then, but the silence is so uncertain.

Lysandre’s face betrays nothing, but for once, Josephine knows she holds—something. Of what significance she cannot tell, not yet.

“Please continue,” says Lysandre, and the pit of Josephine’s stomach drops. She can divine more, but it will be invasive, cruel, and come to nothing.

“That is the extent of my foresight,” Josephine says, and the hard look in Lysandre’s eyes signals her mistake. “I am out of tricks.” 

“Do not think of me as a parlor game,” Lysandre answers, sudden and cold. “What do you know?”

Everything in Josephine rebels at the command—and then, calm as a hand on her arm, she remembers, _do not issue orders when they don’t trust you to do so._

Josephine tilts her head and meets her eyes. “A minor house, yes? In the Marches, somewhere. Not Kirkwall, not Starkhaven. Perhaps—Ansburg. Close enough to inspire hope of an effort. Far enough to not make much difference either way.”

Lysandre makes no motion, but Josephine gets the distinct sense that the moment she makes a mistake, it will come crashing down. So she straightens a little, finds her bearings. It is familiar to her, this testing—is this what soldiers learn to do, she wonders, thinking of Cullen. Thinking of how he has endless energy to either make his own mistakes, or wait for her to make them, and nothing in between.

“And you,” she says slowly, “The eldest in an ambitious Marcher family. You could raise them up.” It comes out more conniving than she intends, but that is what Lysandre wants. Disdain. “Find a husband in Starkhaven, gain favor with the princes there. Not unheard of.”

Lysandre folds her arms, still silent. The mood has changed—Josephine is missing a piece of it.

“But a mage child,” she says, parsing over the phrase in her mouth, “cannot marry, cannot inherit, is by all means—“ She stops herself before the word comes out of her mouth, but Lysandre only gives her a terse, expectant look.

 _You cannot bribe them with soft words._ Ah. This is what he meant.

“Useless,” Josephine finishes, tone even. To gentle the phrase means to agree with it.

Lysandre continues her vigil, her fingertips beginning to tap against the arm of the chair once more.

“So—a hedgewitch, perhaps, taught you.” Lysandre raises her head a little, and Josephine cannot tell if it is in approval or disagreement. She casts her glance on the table, thinking. “In secret, so you could control yourself, control your gifts. Someone from a little village, an apostate worth her weight in coin.”

“Ah,” says Lysandre, finally, finally, but the indifferent look in her eyes spells failure. Her tone is stark. “Too optimistic.” She lets her fingertips pattern the tattoo on the chair’s arm once, twice, three times. “Magebane.”

 

* * *

 

 Dorian reads, “ _Lysandre is so wasted on the Wardens. The way she said_ my lady _was as perfectly loosed as a bolt from a crossbow. Perhaps the solution lies in recruiting her to be the Inquisition’s emissary to the Anderfels._ ”

Cullen snorts. “If only,” he mutters.

“ _But let me be frank with you, as even in a letter I will keep my promise against silence—_ excuse me?” Dorian’s eyebrows graze his hairline. He responds with woody silence.

“Fine.” Dorian clears his throat. “ _Cullen, does she dream of the problem disappearing into the night? Lost along the way, like a woebegone letter? Does she think me a mage, and if I twiddle my thumbs and summon a Fade spirit I might emerge with an illuminated solution?_ ”

“She doesn’t.” Cullen cannot help but say it aloud, staring at the ceiling of the tent. “Soldiers work to live. Lysandre will never say _madame, please fix it.”_

“Josephine’s not here,” Dorian says. “You can’t argue with her when she’s not here.”

“It’s mad.” He covers his eyes with a hand. “Warriors are simple, not submissive. She’s convinced Lysandre doesn’t want a solution.”

Dorian raises an eyebrow over the parchment. “You can’t blame her, I don’t think.”

“No,” says Cullen, “but this is how Lysandre says _no, try again._ For the Maker’s sake.” He pulls the blankets closer to him. “She can’t bargain with us—it makes her look weak to the Wardens. They rely on her to be absolute.”

Dorian looks unconvinced.

“It’s not a question of convincing her,” Cullen grouses into the blanket. “It’s about finding a better way to do it.”

“You ought to tell her that,” he advises. “Did you know Iron Bull can tell what kind of conversation’s transpired between the two of you just from the way Josephine walks out of your office?”

A pause. “No,” says Cullen.

“Yes,” says Dorian. “Varric and I bet on it, when we can.” He coughs lightly. “I win often, of course. Varric’s a sap—always a hopeful wager. But the categories are quite diverse.”

Cullen pulls the covers up over his nose. “Stop talking,” he—well—he pleads, muffled by wool and fur.

Dorian coughs. “ _I continue to voice these questions without an answer from any party. There is pride, Cullen, and then there is stupidity, and we rapidly approach the borderlands._ ” He stops, examining the paper. “Is she always so candid with you?”

“Yes,” Cullen admits. A long pause. “I consider it a privilege.”

Dorian looks at him in a way he doesn’t quite understand. “As well you should,” he says, finally, and continues. “ _There are whispers in Val Royeaux—true whispers. I can picture the wrinkles of your nose._ Whispers _, you will say,_ and little to worry about till they are made flesh. If they come, they come. _I mean to see they are not given life._ ”

Cullen rubs a thumb along the bridge of his nose.

_I come to the end of my letter, and why I meant to write. I suppose there is enough to relay to excuse how this correspondence drives me to distraction. Isra sent a note: the contracts for the DuParaquettes are delivered to the minister, safe and sound. He will require a favor from me, of course, to act upon them, but the lion’s work is done.”_

Cullen sits up a little too fast. His stomach protests. “She—what?”

“ _He will require a favor from me, of course, to act upon them._ ” Dorian repeats, raises an eyebrow. “He’s a noble, Cullen. He requires motivation to move, not charity.”

“But he has them,” Cullen says, dumbfounded. “I put them in his hands myself.”

“I remember,” Dorian drawls. “You wouldn’t let either of us do it, and you speckled blood all over the box.” He turns the letter over. “The minister was quite taken with the entire picture, I think. The Carta dwarf, the abominable ‘Vint, the wild Southern barbarian.”

“I’d taken a blow to the head,” Cullen says, without shame.

He snorts. “ _She said the extra help was ‘useful in a pinch.’ Commend whoever you sent, and pass me along their name, if you can. I would thank them myself._ What a compliment from Isra,” Dorian remarks dryly. “I’d put that just ahead of ‘well, at least he’s not much of a bleeder,’ after that giant threw you into a tree.”

They pause. Cullen looks up at the canvas eaves of the tent.

Dorian sighs. 

“ _I read Harding’s reports from the Emprise. I imagine your Ferelden sensibility finds the climate agreeable. Winter has swept across the mountains in full force, and you will find Skyhold just as frigid._ ” Dorian goes on for some time about supply requests and attempts to find better infrastructure for the region. “ _The nobles with holdings in the area divide themselves between the bankrupt and the deceased—the chevaliers having made themselves scarce since our doings at Halamshiral—but I will find someone._ ”

Then Dorian pauses, tilts his head as he reads on. Cullen turns over slowly, resting on his side, says his name. He watches his eyes cross the page again and again, and tries not to hold his breath.

 

* * *

 

 “What makes you think a minor family angling for the eye of a prince would hire an apostate?” says Lysandre to the empty air. “Where everyone could see? Where anyone could _know_?”

Josephine swallows. “I erred on the side of caution,” she says. “I see that I was wrong.”

“Magebane,” Lysandre says, “runs plentiful and cheap in a land where everyone fears magic. So: just a little, every day after I made a pond freeze in the middle of spring. Enough to dull me like a rusty blade. To make even walking a painful trial.” She stretches a little, leaning back against the chair. “A lady is allowed to be frail and trembling. In fact, my mother imagined it would make me more attractive. Delicate and genteel.”

“Ah.” Josephine has little to offer but her ear.

“It ruined my insides,” Lysandre says, so casually it sends a chill down her spine. “I cannot manage anything heartier than bread and broth, even now. Such is the way of things.” She remembers the black lines growing from Lysandre’s wrists, how little concern she showed for the Blight marking her skin. Well.

They are here at a crossroads—Josephine wants to say, _by Andraste’s mercy, I’m so sorry_ , but that will not serve here. Lysandre cares little for sympathy, and even less for what Josephine thinks.

There lies their mistake—their assumption of her loyalty. It is not that Lysandre understands Cullen, and does not understand Josephine. It is that she understands each of them as precisely as she knows her own magic, and knows which one is worthy, and which is not.

So she takes a breath, and goes forward. “I assume the Wardens found you?”

“We offered them quarter as they passed through, looking for recruits.” Lysandre’s eyes grow wistful, a little hazy. A side of her Josephine has never seen. “I threw myself at their feet.”

“To recruit you?” Josephine asks. “To take you with them.”

“No,” Lysandre admits, “to kill me.”

Josephine says nothing. She waits. She listens.

“Instead, they gave me a gift.” Lysandre glances at the staff leaning against her high-backed chair. “To make me useful, of service to this paltry world. I thought it had burned everything out of me. Not just my magic. My will to breathe. To live.

“But I was strong.” Lysandre’s voice goes soft, and Josephine holds her breath. “Stronger than I ever thought.”

They sit in the small quiet descending on the tent.

“My lady,” Josephine tries, “I—“  

“I would rather you spit in my face,” Lysandre interrupts, “than call me so.” It lacks a little of its expected heat. 

“Warden-Constable Lysandre,” Josephine begins again, slower this time, and ready. “What would you have of me?”

“Many things,” Lysandre says. “You think I am their leader, but I am too like Clarel.”She furrows her eyes. “The first thing you must do is find someone new.”

 _Or convince you otherwise,_ Josephine thinks. “They follow you,” Josephine says, hands open. “I can’t make or unmake it.”

“Find someone new,” Lysandre commands, and then pauses.

“You said many things,” presses Josephine. “What do you want most?”

Lysandre tilts her head. “You don’t know?” 

Her heart sinks a little, despite the victory of it. She does know. But she nods her head in supplication. 

“Do the one thing I cannot do myself.” For the first time in her memory, Lysandre smiles. It is small, and beguiling, and a little cruel. The heart of cold amusement. “Get us out of the mountains. Out from under the Inquisition’s boot.” Lysandre lays her challenge at Josephine’s feet like a map. “Get us out of Orlais as free men.” 

 

* * *

 

 Dorian blinks. “Sorry,” he says, clears his throat. “Ah. _I… cannot imagine it, the way Harding describes the lyrium growing out of stone and earth. She said it sings. Her scouting party brought a templar, and the lyrium made music between his ears. She sent him back to Skyhold quick as she could. He is well._ ”

A knot ties itself in Cullen’s belly. Dorian stops, reading ahead. After several heartbeats’ worth of unbearable silence, he reaches across the space and touches his arm.

“You did not tell me,” Dorian says, “that she knew.”

“She figured it out herself,” Cullen mutters, and Dorian makes a sound under his breath. “What does she say?” he says, not pleading.

“Are you—are you sure?” he asks, and the gentle nature of his voice sets Cullen’s heart racing. “It is—this is meant for you.” Dorian rests the letter in his lap. “This is not mine to read. You should wait until you can see it yourself.” 

“Dorian,” says Cullen quietly, “I won’t be able to read it until we are miles from here. I cannot wait miles.” The phrase sits between them, naked in its truth. “I can’t. So—please.”

He exhales, slowly, and begins again. “ _I will not ask if it sings to you. I admit, when I could not breathe. My first thought was,_ I must write him and demand an answer. _The thought of strange voices murmuring in your ears, trying to pull you into madness—well._ ”

It does not seem real.

Not in the way he disbelieves a nightmare’s fantastic height, a cold hand in the dark.

Dorian hesitates, but he nods in silent _go on._

“ _I will not demand,_ ” he reads, “ _but I will ask only this: if it sings to you, do not listen. Do not follow. I cannot imagine how one fights such a darkness. You must already, with tooth and nail. You need no request from me to do it._ ”

He pauses before he swallows once, and continues. “ _But I cannot seal the letter without saying so. My fingers will not reach for my candle, nor press my seal into the wax. Here it lies: the price of my voice when you are far and unsafe, in the cold and the dark. Come home in one piece. I think of you._ _Regards, Josephine Montilyet._ ”

The silence is deafening. Dorian very quickly folds the letter up, as though he should not look at it for a moment longer. The look on his face seems as though he’s tripped into a hole far wider than he anticipated. Completely bewildered.

Cullen mutters, “Is it—every word?”

“Yes.” Dorian looks down at the letter as though he doesn’t half-believe it himself. “I read each one.”

He props himself up on his elbow, and it is weak, and his hand trembles—from the lyrium shakes, of course, he will hold onto the excuse until it takes him for its own—and he touches the paper. “Where does it end?” he asks.

Dorian turns over the parchment. “There,” he says quietly. “That is where she says it.”

Black loops and scratches, as far as he can tell. Four words.

“Thank you,” Cullen finally says, taking the letter. He sits up, folds the letter precisely along the creases, gently sliding it back into the envelope. Cullen has so few precious things in the world.

Dorian’s eyes bore through him. “What’s going on, exactly?” he asks. He tries to keep his voice light, but it goes low, a little too serious. 

“A letter from a colleague,” Cullen answers. So hollow the words echo in the tent.

Dorian snorts. “No,” he argues. “That’s—” He gestures to the paper sitting in Cullen’s lap, frowns. “Quite different.”

“Don’t overthink it.” Cullen says it as much for himself as for Dorian.

He blinks. “Cullen,” he begins, adopting the tone of a wise man speaking to a child, “You’re ridiculous. Even I can see she cares for you.”

Cullen wants to say _Josephine cares for everyone._ But he will not cheapen what she has given him.

“It is obvious to me,” Dorian continues, “and everyone from here to Val Royeaux that you feel the same. So—do something.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Such as?”

 “Whatever you mad, obtuse Southerners do to show you care. Kneel and give oath on your soul and country? Swear fealty like a peasant? You—” Dorian answers his own question and drops his head into his hands. “—did that already, you lost half the blood in your body ensuring her contracts made it to Val Royeaux. _Maker,_ Cullen. Why not tell her?”

He doesn’t answer. There’s too much to say, and nothing, all at once. He cannot explain his perverse sense of duty to Dorian, how he will not use such an action to gain favor with her. It would render it meaningless. And Cullen is a man of the sword. His blood and flesh mean very little, as far as promises and sacrifice go.

“After all of that.” Dorian rubs his temples. “What are you trying to prove?” 

“Nothing I haven’t told her already,” Cullen says quietly, the thought making a home in his chest like warm coals. Every piece he has collected—these moments where their lives touch and do not diverge from one another—provide a heat all their own.

Josephine must know her gift with words, but perhaps cannot know the gift her words give. Even while they are parted, her letter pulls him close, wraps him in her presence. Words made flesh, the memory of her fingers squeezing his arm, the perfect spot where his armor did not touch. How the grasp of her hand, the touch of her lips, even on leather, not even on his flesh—burns him still, as though she never let him go.  

Dorian considers him. “And what have you said?”

The revelation doesn’t shake him—he has known, known for months, since he stood at her door and bared whatever he had, whatever he was, whatever he could hold for her. Truths can be simple. They rest on the tongue, ready to be spoken aloud when called upon. It is an answer. Just an answer.

“I am hers,” Cullen says, “from crown to sword.” 

 

* * *

 

A week passes, then two. It turns into a month. Reports come occasionally from the Emprise. But no word from Cullen.

Josephine cannot sleep, but cannot press her pen to paper, either. So she lays under a mountain of blankets in her bed, face turned to the window. Heavy, grey clouds obscure every star. The skies herald more snow in the passes. More time.

How sick she is of waiting.

By no means is Josephine without task, without purpose. Her days are full—fuller now, with their commander and Inquisitor headlong into the bitter highlands. She is not _without_ , she is not less, she is just as complete as she was when he was only a tower away, tucked away in his cold, ramshackle office, and not across miles and miles of snowy sea.

But that does not eliminate the nonsense. How incredibly idiotic it seems. To lie here, awake, and wondering. To wish to tell him of her little victory, and the failures it will precede.

To want. 

There is so much Josephine wants and does not have, enough to make her feel the selfish child. She would be happy with just this: word from the Emprise, although the roar in her heart demands much more in the quiet in the night.

How can one long for conversation? There are plenty in Skyhold who will lend her their ear, who will sit and debate matters of state and fortitude and whatever else she needs to piece out to understand. Josephine is veritably surrounded by the best of Thedas, and yet, the one voice she cannot hear is one she wants to stir into debate, to hear raised in passion, or anger, or whatever must happen.

How can one long for _weight?_  For steadiness, for the heavy weight of a hand in hers. A hand that asks for nothing but what she will give and give freely. To consume bitter worry for the keeper of that hand, for what he inevitably endures in the miles far from where they call home. To make promises and reassurances—to dare both the Maker and Andraste to attempt to disrupt whatever journey will finally bring him back, because Josephine has _willed_ his return, willed him safe and whole, and to break that can only be called what it is: a misguided attempt to cross her.

 _This is what it means_ , a voice says in the back of her mind, more gently than it ought, _to miss someone._

 

* * *

 

 Cullen dozes through a hard windstorm—the kind to rip thatching from a rooftop. The howling scrambles the dull, off-tune music scratching at him in the quiet, though it extinguishes any hope of candlelight.

His eyes open and close, hour by hour, until sometime in the little hours of the morning he lets his eyes fall on the letter, still sitting at his bedside.

 _Commander Cullen Rutherford_ , reads the envelope. Hazy. Her handwriting really is abominable, when she becomes too caught up in her own words.

It—his body realizes it before his brain can catch up, jolts into action as he scrambles, half on his knees, to the desk, nearly knocking over his armor rack in the process.

Cullen gets twenty-eight minutes, by his counting. Not even enough time to read what he wrote by the time he signs his name.

He seals it with red wax, a sloppy ordeal, but it is done.

Trevelyan bursts into camp in the early morning hours—Cullen is caught adding a cube of sugar to his tea as he stands next to the fire, waiting for his lieutenants to amass so he may give them the day’s tasks.

She’s wild, eyes wide. Mud splashed up on the back of her armor—she ran there panicked. “Get them up. I need everyone,” she snaps.

Cullen nods and crosses his arms. “Inquisitor. What’s happened?”

“There’s no time,” she says.

He holds up a hand. “There must be,” he says. “What happened?”

The pause is good—it makes her breathe for a moment, and then she says, voice full of despair, “People in cages all over the valley.” She scrubs at her eyes. “I found two, and then I—there was a glimmer, a powerful one, covering the rest, and I broke it.”

Cullen ignores the way his heart drops to the pit of his stomach. “How many?”

“Twenty,” whispers Trevelyan. “At least. I left Arram there. Solas and Blackwall scout the rest. I—hurry.”  

Cullen assembles healers, sets troops to breaking open the abandoned houses in the village and building fires, assembling cots and mats—Harding takes to the task like a fish to water, taking a gentle hand with the confused villagers and snapping at soldiers to double-time.

Cullen takes a squad of Wardens, has them find every cart and ox they can find. They follow, slow, archers at the ready and swords and shields clasped. They breach the top of the overlook leading down into the valley—and Cullen has to stop.

He can see the cages now, unfettered by the glimmer covering them. Soft, golden orbs—markers to lead the way—blossom up into the air next above each one.

Cullen counts twenty-six. And then another bubbles up, gold and damningly perfect on the horizon. He splits them up—Wardens to guard the wagons, Wardens to break open the cages, Wardens to carry and run the prisoners back and forth. Archers on the eaves of stone, watching for Red Templars, ready with signal fire.

Their groups are a little small, but he will risk it—there are too many, and when night falls the task will take twice as long. Cullen and Dorian take two Wardens and twist through the forest.

The guards manning the cages are smaller in number than he expected: a testament to their slow and inexorable retaking of the Emprise. Running out of numbers to replace their dead. On a different day, Cullen would count it as the victory it was.

Cullen almost mistakes the first cage they come upon as empty, until a little voice cries out. It is abandoned by Red Templars, and when they go closer he sees why—just a little boy and an old woman, huddled against the cold in the corner.

They break open the cage, the rusty lock snapping and falling into the snow. Cullen wrenches open the metal door, and hollow, green eyes find his. She screams, the woman, twining her arms through the high bars of the cage, screams high and metal-sharp. She clings to the side of the cage, staring at Cullen with death’s stubbornness in her eyes.

Cullen opens his mouth to say _you’re safe, you’re safe_ , but the boy scrambles to her on hands and knees, locks his little arms around her waist. Her feet are broken, twisted and bloody. Hobbled, with a stump and a good hammer.  

“It’s all right,” rasps the boy, tugging at the old woman. “It’s all right, Nan. He’s not a templar.”

It rings him numb to the bone, this. His hands outstretched, as the boy calms her, unknots her from the rungs. Wordlessly, Cullen climbs inside the cage, picks her up in his arms. She’s stiff, but lets him lift her, carry her out.

The sound of her screams echoes through him. It dulls everything to the center of his soul. As though everything about him has gone white, blank, empty. Cullen is no longer there. Just a body—moving. Doing what it is supposed to do. Doing only what it can.

And so they cycle, cage by cage, until on the coast of a frozen lake only he and Dorian are left to pry open the bars, help the prisoners out into the snow in their bare feet. As soon as they unload a sick _crack_ splits the air—a green slice in the air above them, lightning crackling over their heads, giving birth to hooded wraiths with long claws.

There are six wraiths and twelve refugees—Cullen says, “Lead them back up the path.”

“Are you mad?” Dorian yells, “Trevelyan is at least a mile off.”

His voice is steady as the frozen river. “Then sound the horn,” he orders, nodding to the freed prisoners, “and get them back up the hills.” The wraiths catch their scent, turning in a flurry of tattered robes. They scream—shrieks to shatter glass, and lunge forward. He will need to be quick. He grips the shield resting heavy on his arm.

“Don’t be stupid.” Dorian’s voice is sharp, but—the sound is farther away, he’s pulling back.

“Get them back up the hills,” Cullen says, and draws his sword.

 

* * *

 

When the letter comes, it is small. An envelope so small Josephine very nearly misses it, brown and completely unobtrusive. It is addressed to her in another’s handwriting, but the seal is clear.

Plain wax, and an obviously hand-etched _CR_ from the tip of a pen-knife. Of course he has no seal. The thought of him doing it so it would be from him, not the Inquisition’s great, all-seeing eye, proves wretchedly endearing.

Josephine tucks it in her pocket, beside the ever-present matches wrapped in her handkerchief. She saves it. How embarrassing. But she waits until she can be alone.

So late that night, sitting on the edge of her bed, she draws her pen-knife and opens the letter.

She glances down without reading—her heart falls, a little, because it is _so_ short. She knew this, of course—it is a small piece of correspondence, Cullen is by no means loquacious, but it has been so long. So long, and with no word at all.

 _My lady_ , it says.

Cullen’s fussy sense of duty demands formality in the written word.

_Do not think overmuch of me. I am well enough. The cold helps. Trevelyan’s reports are impeccable. They give a clearer picture than anything I could say. She goes scouting for the final push tomorrow._

There is no mention of the Red Templars, of Samson, of trouble, of the red lyrium. The quick mention and then absence of these factors consume the page as obviously as an ink spill. Cullen only obfuscates what he cannot speak of. The emptiness of it nips at her lungs, like breathing in too-cold air.

But he has never been a wordsmith. A truth so heavy cannot lie here, despite how Josephine craves it. And so, onward: 

_Be patient with Lysandre. She is old and stubborn, like me. All the Wardens have left is their pride. You know this already. She won’t haggle. She won’t say yes until we have it perfect. We’ll find it._

“Perhaps we’ll move them into the loft above your office,” Josephine mutters without heat, “and then you can manage them yourself.”

_Forgive the long delay. It is hard to write. Harder still to live up to the example of your letter.  I possess none of your talents. Your voice is a singular sound, even scratched into parchment. No wonders exist in these highlands, and yet I now possess one. I can hear you. Your voice carries far, through the dark and the cold._

_This is all to say, forgive a fool for taking so long in his response. To learn you are a little safer gives me some hope. To know you are warm and well is its own reward._

A long space, now, in the letter. Like the endless spaces that occupy their conversations when he needs time to understand what he can say. Mustering courage. Her heart pounds in her ears, waiting—even if she cannot name for what she waits.

The end of the letter lies bare and true as an open hand—a hand she knows intimately, that she has held and kissed, and in a sudden, fierce blaze of thought, promises to kiss again. A sword hand, scarred across the palm, ready to bear. 

 

 

 

_I don’t know how to say this, but I look to your words._

_They linger at the center of everything. And they weave between my fingers, as though they know touch._

_You said it, once: between us lies a perfect place. I read your letter, Josephine, and I am found. I only know relief. Like a compass must when it finds due north at last._


	14. match

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josephine and Cullen reunite. What follows is part duty, part fate, and part inability to deny what's going on any longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As my new year's resolution for timeliness is now in shreds, I thank you all for your patience.  
> You can find me on tumblr  here . Thanks to ruewalker for this hand-lettered art  from last chapter!  
> As usual, all hail sunspeared, champion beta, without whom I would be lost in a cold wilderness of "Oh, no. Oh, God."

“Tevinter will not meet with us.” Calla hands her the letter across the desk with two hands, as though it is a sacred relic they mean to place on an ancient altar.

Josephine flips over the parchment envelope. The seal is unbroken. “Do we now count soothsaying among your talents?”

Calla hides her smile in the press of her lips. “Not yet,” she says. “But my mother taught me such a thin letter holds either very good news, or very bad.” Calla’s mother has been the head clerk for Orlais’ most prominent textile merchant house for as long as Josephine can remember. Their emblem is a swan embroidered in blue silk—most of Calla’s skirts sport a delicate, hand-stitched sigil near the clasp in the back.

“Let us test her wisdom.” She reaches for her letter opener.

“I wouldn’t,” says Calla. “But far be it from me to stop you, my lady.”

“Such cheek.” The parchment opens, unfolds, and Josephine reads for fate. “Tevinter will not meet with us.”

Calla leans across the desk with curiosity. “So few lines,” she remarks.

“Yet the reasons why would fill the entirety of one of the library shelves.” Josephine balances her head on her hand. “Will you find Lord Pavus and I a time to meet as soon as he returns?”

It will call for a particular bottle she’s been eyeing in the cellar. Dorian does not require a good Tevinter red to be of great service, but it pleases Josephine to have a reason to drink something other than the swill they serve in the kitchens, and with someone who holds the proper appreciation.

“Of course,” Calla says, and abruptly turns, taking careful steps away, her hands behind her back.

Josephine blinks. “Are we finished, then?”

Calla gives her a long look over her shoulder. “I only do as you ask.”

“But we—”

“To find a meeting time with Lord Pavus as soon as he returns, yes?” Calla faces her now, hands still folded behind her back, adjusting her weight from one foot to the other.

“Calla,” Josephine says, with narrowed eyes.

“Oh?” says Calla. “Do you not know?” The way her lips curl up into a smile makes Josephine notice the rouge she’s traced onto them—a delicate, deep plum, perfectly suited to her dark skin, and applied with a fine hand. A gift from Josephine for her last name day. Her eyes are lined with kohl, her hair impeccably coiffed. Calla is the peak of loveliness, always, but it is a drudge of a morning in the middle of a week best characterized by wet snow at all hours of the day and night.

(Briony, of course, is ever-present in the hall, and this morning Josephine walked in on them mid-sentence, Calla recounting with swooping, wide gestures about a trip to a waterfall she took with her brother before the war. Briony’s eyes followed each movement of her fingers, rapt with attention. In their very short introductions, Josephine learned Briony was promised to the Templars as a babe, in the tradition of her family and so many others. Perhaps she had never seen a waterfall. And then it was too, too early for her heart to hurt so.)

“I’m sure I don’t.”

Calla’s smile grows slyer at her irritation.

“A portion of the Inquisitor’s retinue returned this morning,” she says, looking at her nails. “I believe it includes Lord Pavus, along with some others.”

It is as though all the frost clinging to the windowpanes finds a new home in Josephine—the bitter, uncertain jolt of realization, and then—joy, yes? She can name it here, to herself. That warm flush to thaw the hard nails of the cold against her spine.

“My lady?” says Calla in a tone of voice to suggest _shall I get the brandy?_

“No need to bother Lord Pavus today,” Josephine says, in a steady, certain voice that is wholly her own. “I’m sure he could use the day to resettle. But tomorrow, if you could.”

Calla’s smile does not dim a single iota. _We must be the laughingstock of Skyhold_ , Josephine thinks, not for the first time. A simple fact without vexation.

“As you wish. Excuse me for just a moment,” Calla says, bows at the waist, and exits.

One, two, three breaths after she’s left, Josephine rises and goes to the door. Briony nods her head.

“How long has she been pursuing that plan?” she asks, playing innocence.

“Since he left,” Briony says, and Josephine praises the blunt honesty of soldiers. “Well—not exactly that. But the drama.”

“The drama,” Josephine repeats. “Well-executed.” She furrows her brow. “Where did she go?”

“To get the rest of your correspondence, I think,” Briony admits. “She was too impatient to watch you go through it all piece by piece after she found her—opportunity. I found a place she could hide it in the cellar.”

Josephine gently rubs the bridge of her nose, and casts a glance towards the long doors of the grand hall, parsing her mind in hopes of a schedule rearrangement.

“If you—begging your pardon,” Briony says, and Josephine thinks this may have been the most words they’ve all said together since it began, “he won’t be back up till evening. Takes awhile to set everything to rights down there.”

The quiet, earnest kindness of the statement catches Josephine completely off-guard, despite the fact she knew it already. “Of course,” she says. “Thank you.”

Briony ducks her head. “Not at all.”

Calla reappears from the cellar, a basket of letters balanced on her hip.

“Are our follies done then, soothsayer?” Josephine wrinkles her nose.

“Just so, my lady,” Calla answers, still smiling wide and wider as Briony holds the door open for the both of them.

 

* * *

 

 

Seventy-eight days after departing, Cullen rides up to the camps at Skyhold. Seventy-eight days precisely, as he values accuracy. When one cannot eat, or sleep, one counts.

Cullen is a living ache, but Cullen lives. The hard ride from the highlands, even in the beginnings of a foul blizzard, echoes succor in every step. _Come home in one piece. Come home. Come home._ Six miles out from the heart of the Emprise, his eyes settle. Four days east, and he and Dorian share a miserable, glorious hardtack ration. (“Stop smiling,” Dorian demanded. “This is disgusting.” But Cullen could not.)

His body is twine, rewinding itself around a wooden spool. His hands shake badly as they clutch at the reins of his horse. The itch of the lyrium-need scratches and dissipates at random, and old aches flare up in his legs, his back.

There is a span of three days—three nights where geographically he must lay perfectly in between Skyhold and the Emprise, where he neither dreams nor feels phantom hands. Far enough from the lyrium to disappear his hallucinations, but close enough to halt the dreams.

Three nights of total peace. He sleeps like a dead man, and marks the map, as though he could return to this snowy spot one day, as though he ever will.

It will be different—it is always different—but he is still here, and mostly whole, for whatever good that serves.

The winter season means darkness comes early, even in the mountains, and night sweeps over Skyhold before he begins the journey up from camp settling the forces in camp. He doesn’t make it back up to his office until after the evening bell has rung for dinner. He slumps in his chair, grateful for a spot of breath until Manon hefts a crate of parchment onto his desk. It settles with a heavy thump.

She says, “Lady Cassandra and I weeded through the non-essentials, ser, even responded to a few, but, well—“

“Most things are non-essential to Cassandra,” Cullen says.

Manon tilts her head in agreement. “She said you’d be up to your neck in madness, being in the Emprise and all. We saw the reports.” Her choice of words makes a piece of him flinch, hard, but he only nods. After all, it was true. “If it’s any comfort, ser, it only made her more excited to get the chance to go out to the Emprise.”

He suppresses a snort. “The highlands will prove no match for her, but nothing stands up to Lady Cassandra’s enthusiasm. She finds contentment in evisceration.”

Manon nods solemnly. “I know, ser,” she says, tone pale. “She had me spar with her every morning.”

Now Cullen cannot hide his smile. “Every morning?” He can see she’s holding most of her weight on her left foot. Cassandra is fond of a hard pommel strike to the knee. He’s seen her shatter a kneecap that way before. Manon has gotten off with just a bad bruise. “How are you alive?”

“I paid Adan ten sovereigns to help me fake a pneumonia after the first three weeks,” she says, without skipping a beat, and Cullen does laugh, now. “It was supposed to be four days, but she figured it out. She made me run to the top of the mountain.”

“She accompanied you for supervisory purposes, I assume.” He rests his chin on his hand.

“She beat me to the top by six minutes,” Manon says, miserable. “And then on the way back we ran into a snow-bear, and I had to convince her it was too dark for us to carry it back alone.”

“Cassandra will, at times, follow the example of the Maker’s mercy.”

“I had to get a sled and drag it back at first light, alone.” Manon rubs her brow with two fingers. “But the pelt’s hanging on my wall now.”

She must be fond of her, Cullen realizes, his eyebrows nearly touching his hairline. Quite fond. Cassandra does not _give gifts._

“She knows so much,” she says, tone a little wistful. “Never said a word about me using two swords. You two are the only masters who never tried to get me to learn the shield.”

“Your speed is unmatched,” Cullen tells her. They’ve spoken of this before. “It is a waste of your talent to force you into a mold.”

“She called me a _quick little shit_ once,” Manon mutters. “Two weeks ago she said _I forgot you were Orlesian_ after we finished a match.” She clears her throat. “And, ah, she told me we would continue when she returned.”

And that, that is the highest praise. “I will ensure your schedule allows for it,” Cullen assures her, taking a new letter down from the stack. “You can count on that, Captain.”

Manon ducks her head. “Thank you, ser,” she says. “I—one more thing, if you please.”

Cullen finds his letter opener under a pile of discarded parchment. “Of course. Proceed.”

“Do you hope to see the lady ambassador?” Manon asks.

Cullen stares at her. The statement is so bold his knife pauses in the middle of cutting open the envelope.

She blinks, the rising flush on her cheeks clashing with her carrot-red hair. “Today, I mean. Or—this evening. Soon. Ser.”

“Why would I?” Cullen says the first thing he can think of.

“Well—the Wardens, she visited them.”

Cullen tries to find an air of casualness, but it is somewhat impossible. “I know. I read her report.”

“No,” Manon says, “she—she went again, I walked her back up to Ser Briony after. She seemed—well, it’s the lady ambassador, she always seems calm—but she was too wrapped up in her thoughts to say much. Not like last time.”

“When she surprised the Warden-Constable,” Cullen says, attempting to fill in the gap.

“Well—no, I wasn’t with her for that, but Guard Emery said she tried to get Ser Briony to talk all the way up to the top, but it wasn’t bad. He said it paled in comparison to—“ She pauses. “I shouldn’t.”

“Go on,” Cullen says. “It’s all right.”

“When you engaged in your discussion.” Cullen had no idea Manon possessed such a talent for euphemism and tact. “During the last of the autumn storms. Both of you had much to say.” She looks at her boots.

“How do you know?” he wonders aloud. He still holds his knife inside the envelope. There’s not a lick of heat or anger in it.

Manon takes a breath and looks him square in the eye. “Permission to speak candidly, ser?”

“Of course.” Cullen’s head reels.

“You lined the path with an audience,” Manon rattles off, as though if she says it quickly enough it won’t be as embarrassing as it is. “Guards are like scullery maids, ser. Don’t you know that?”

He does.

 

* * *

 

 

Josephine eyes the silken pouch Leliana toys with at her desk. The rookery’s air is crisp with cold—they watch broad swaths of snow twirl and fall out the window. The sun has long since set, but in Skyhold’s torchlight, it creates graceful shadows, like long birds’ wings.

“You gnaw at this,” Leliana finally says, “like a dog at a bone. It’s an unseemly habit.”

“Unseemly?” Josephine rolls her eyes. She can, with Leliana. “I’m a curious mind. And I do not _gnaw._ ” She ties and reties her coat. Perhaps Leliana can exist up here with no fire but for her alcove of altar candles, but Josephine is made of thinner stuff. “If anything, I taste and sample a variety of choices.”

“Are you doing this at Trevelyan’s bidding?” she asks, barely sparing her a sideways glance. “Has she put you up to this?”

“No,” says Josephine.

“Vivienne’s, then.” Leliana touches the bridge of her nose.

“Vivienne thinks you would make a paper-thin Divine,” Josephine admits.

“Precisely. Perhaps her desire for research is to find weaknesses.”

“I would never agree to it.” She lets that sit between them. “There are many games I play, many pieces I touch, but I would not play one to bring you to heel.”

Leliana exhales slowly. “Then that is that.”

There’s quiet for a moment. Josephine watches the guard rotations switch on one of the battlements. She watches Bull trundle into a snowbank barefoot, and watches Krem follow, and then Skinner, and Dalish, and three more of the Chargers. A competition in the name of frostbite. Josephine sets her bet on the elves.

“You should stop,” Leliana says, finally.

“Your word choice impresses me.” Josephine doesn’t take her eyes from the competition below—Bull is now singing a song, loudly and out of tune, but the words are lost in the roar of the wind. “You think you can make it my idea.”

“I realize I cannot convince you through conventional means.” Leliana’s tone, wry and sharp, brushes between them like the thatch of a broom.

“You will convince me,” Josephine says quietly, patiently, folding her gloved hands together and suppressing a shiver, “when you say it.”

Leliana just waits. But Josephine finds succor in this game after so many years, and so much practice.

“ _I do not want to be Divine._ ” Josephine’s attempt at Leliana’s accent is horrific enough to warrant comparisons to nails on glass. “ _I do not think I would be effective._ ”

Leliana is still quiet, though she can feel her tense beside her.

“ _I have no new ideas for Thedas.”_

“Cassandra is better,” Leliana says. “We’ve talked this to death.”

“ _Thedas’ path is steady,_ ” Josephine continues, sing-song as a bird. “ _The idea of leading the Grand Mass in song does not titillate._ ”

“Vivienne would suit.” Leliana never fidgets. Josephine has tried to emulate the quality ever since their paths crossed. Even now, when Josephine would pace, pick at her gloves, need to move and move to exorcise her own energy, Leliana stands like a statue. “Revolutionary, in her own way.”

Josephine eyes an opening. “ _Things can continue as they are_ ,” she murmurs, “ _and I will accept them. I will accept I cannot change them. I accept whether we slide back, or move forwards. I am at peace._ ”

Leliana says, suddenly, tinged with a black bitterness, “My faith is shaken.”

It gives her pause. Snow falls. It’s piling in a little mound between Bull’s horns. Krem has given up, and now shovels higher piles of snow around Bull’s massive legs. The competition remains unflinching between himself, Skinner, and Dalish. “Everyone’s faith is shaken,” says Josephine. “Even the Divine’s, from time to time.”

“How unconventional,” Leliana grouses, arms folded across her chest.

“How lovely,” Josephine corrects. “What an example to set. The Divine has never been defined by the impeccable nature of her faith.”

“You are not even Andrastean,” she says, giving her a sidelong look.

“I understand the culture.” Josephine waves an airy hand, and Leliana makes an uncouth noise—a cross between a cough and a snort. She presses on anyway. “Andraste’s Herald walks among us, closes rifts, murders duchesses at grand balls. The veneer is cracked, Leliana. They love her. How could they not love you?”

Dalish gives up, hopping out of the snow and casting little warm coals around her feet, so natural the flames look like ribbons. Skinner and Bull stare at each other. The snow is piled to Bull’s waist.

Leliana exhales.

And the silk pouch is being offered to her now, from Leliana’s leather-gloved hand. Josephine takes the parcel, undoes the cord, and pulls out the contents with two fingers.

Her necklace. Gold and whole. No longer broken on the floor of her office.

She had assumed the servants swept it away. She bothered no one about it, since it seemed so—petty. Small. To inquire about a necklace when blood had been spilled.

Josephine’s eyes sting, and she blinks it away quickly.

“Dagna repaired it, forgot it, then misplaced it.” Leliana recounts this with a hum of amusement. “She discovered it this afternoon. I thought you’d gone long enough without it. May I?”

Josephine just nods, and Leliana hooks the necklace about her throat.

“It took her time to replicate the gold,” Leliana says. “To age it to match the rest. This is very old, Josie.”

“My father gave it to my mother.” Josephine’s voice is quiet. “It is one of the few pieces in the Montilyets’ possession never sold, pawned, stolen, or gambled away.” She fingers it delicately before tucking it inside her coat.

A gift from her mother, mere hours before Josephine came before Antiva’s king for the first time. _Here is your crown_ , she said _. Strong as gold, and just as peaceable._

She welcomes the familiar weight against her chest. They say no more. Skinner wins the contest. There’s no whoop of victory to echo against Skyhold’s walls, but the smug grin on her face brightens the shadows all the way to the rookery.

The lights are on in Cullen’s office. They have been all this time. Josephine has not permitted her glance to fall that way. She allows her peripherals to regard it, for just a moment. But even that infinitesimal motion does not escape Leliana.

“Are you sure you’re finished with Trevelyan’s account of the Emprise?” Josephine attempts to change the subject back to the original reason of her visit, somehow managing to steer the conversation directly into the path she doesn’t wish to take.

“Quite.” Leliana picks up the report and places it in her hands. A little thicker than usual, but Trevelyan possesses a rare gift for concise and matter-of-fact narrative.

“I look fondly forward to my morning reading,” Josephine says with a sigh. “What a gift.”

Leliana says, “Read it now.”

The solid urgency in it makes her glance up. Leliana crosses her arms, eyes firm.

“Read it now,” she repeats. “Before you see him.”

Normally, Josephine would banter her way out of one of Leliana’s looks, slide out from underneath it unscathed. But the look in her eyes makes all thoughts of arguing disappear.

Leliana pulls out the chair to her desk. The rookery is cold but Leliana keeps it well lit for working late into the night. Josephine makes herself comfortable and draws a candle closer to her examination.

“It will take a little while,” she warns.

“It should,” Leliana says. “It is a full report.”

So Leliana circles the rookery in idle rotations: sitting at another table to pen a letter, taking a report from a scout, tending to the birds, replacing the candle stubs on her altar. Eventually her noise fades away, and all Josephine can do is read.

Even when it seems unbearable, she pushes onward. It is no different from any other report, she tells herself. It evolves into a ceaseless mantra. Just another tale of the Inquisition fighting against hardships visible and invisible. She has read countless of them now.

Anger, admittedly, happens first, like the strike of a match. Pieces of the text sink their teeth into her mind: _hallucinations_ , she reads. _Grave physical discomforts. I suspect he does not eat._ A rush of painful worry twists into disbelief at first instinct, raw and red. _How could he._ She has to steel herself against the clanging of that demand, ringing in her until she can hear nothing else.

Her left hand clenches so hard in her lap she imagines the leather creaks. The chore of unfolding her fingers proves worthwhile. Each motion reminds her, breath by breath: this is not how they proceed with each other now. No matter how justified the urge, no matter in whom it lives, it does not work. It does not mend. It only unmakes.

The little glimmering of his office light in the snowstorm. She knows, even under all this, if she turned to look at it once more it would ignite the same instinct. Moth and flame.

Josephine realizes the report has been turned over to the last page for several minutes, her eyes going in and out of focus, when Leliana clears her throat.

“So.” Leliana is brisk and unflinching. “You have questions.”

She breathes in once, and out. The world settles.

“No,” says Josephine. “I have—a plan.”

 

* * *

 

 

Hours after Manon goes, apologizing profusely, Cullen rubs a thumb along a twinging tendon in his thigh, and turns to the next page of Rylen’s report. The next section is the work of many hands—renderings of creatures, some painstakingly detailed and others quickly scribbled, as though he did it with a pen in one hand and a sword in the other. Giant birds with iron-hard underbellies and wingspans the length of a grown man, razor beaks—no teeth, thank the Maker. Tortoises with barbed, poisonous tails, drooling foul acid that hisses when it drips onto desert stone, drawn with lazy, unfocused eyes. A whirlpool of sand, spinning like a dervish, small enough to dance on the edge of a blade before it swallows a man alive.

The heading, written in similarly precise handwriting: _Show These to Dagna So She Can Make Something to Either Kill Them_ _or Leave Us the Fuck Alone, Ser._

Rylen’s steadiness of hand remains remarkable—few know he drew the marks upon his own face with needle, ink, and a mirror, and that they begin again at his sternum and the valley of his elbows. The next page is various flora, fauna, and a request for _anybody with half a brain for how this nonsense should be utilized._ A completed map of the keep, next, and then landscapes of the desert and its mountains from three different angles.

Cullen is glad to see the captain is enjoying himself to the fullest.

The pile of correspondence sits as high as his nose—from the desert and the lowland Dales, from Crestwood, and even a new packet, tied with twine, that beat him here from the Emprise. Normally, the painfully large stack of missives would prove a headache, but not tonight. He can read all of it, every word.

A few quick knocks at the door. “Come in,” he calls, heaving himself to his feet, and the door opens.

The winter wind gusts inside his little office, extinguishing each candle and threatening the brazier smoldering behind his desk—an addition from Cassandra, no doubt, who finds her room above the forge “drafty”—snow sweeps inside in a white flurry, undoubtedly what’s piled up on the sides of the bailey, and his letters, both the pile of finished missives and the detritus from everything he’s opened so far, scatter across the floor.

“Andraste at the _stake_ ,” snaps Josephine, and puts the weight of her entire body into shutting the door. The wind protests, of course, but eventually it shuts and latches, and she leans back against the heavy wood with a sigh.

She at least dons a coat, today—well-made, dark green and cream-colored wool, a high collar turned up against the wind. It falls past her knees, cinched in at the waist with a belt tied in an elegant knot. Snow dots her sleeves, her shoulders, her hair, too cold in the room to simply melt away. She bends her head and brushes at it furiously with her gloved hands. Little tendrils of gold embroidery wind across the line of her shoulders.

Cullen closes his eyes for a whole breath before opening them again. She still stands there.

“Oh no,” Josephine murmurs, taking in the mess of the room. Her eyes widen. “I’ve destroyed your office.”

“You’re here,” Cullen says.

Her gaze tilts up at the sound of his voice, and they look at each other for the first time in ten weeks.

The dark shadows in the room cover them. The only remaining light glows dimly from the brazier at his feet and a haphazard shaft of moonlight spilling from the tall window.

He moves slowly, half due to the soreness of his legs, half because in a moment they will light the candles, gather the letters, right the mess. They will come back to themselves, to the business she has undoubtedly arrived at his office to discuss, and he needs—time. He knows his weakness even when his knees don’t remind him. He does not want to remember who he is, and who she is, and where they stand, and all the work they need to do. Just this. Just for another breath.

And then Josephine moves to meet him in the center of the room, quick, small steps, fluttering with impatience. “I always have been,” she informs him wryly, eyes cast down at her coat. She brushes the snow from her front. “It is you who went away, and brought me back nothing but a snowstorm.”

“The Emprise only sends its best.” The corner of his lips turn up in a smirk.

“We must work on your creative notions, Cullen,” she scolds, “if this is your idea of good will. The south should be ashamed.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I’m flattered to know my influence extends to seasonable mountain weather.”

“ _Seasonable_ ,” Josephine mutters. “The wind is vengeful enough, but this snow is unjust by all accounts.” She flexes her hands to will feeling back into her fingers. He crosses his arms to prevent reaching out and warming them himself.

“How brave of you,” he says, feeling the smirk on his face widening, “to venture all the way to my office in spite of it.”

“I have not seen you in seventy-eight days,” Josephine says, as if it is reason enough.

He would have felt on sturdier ground if she’d slapped him, or taken hold of his breastplate and shaken him like a ragdoll. His mouth opens and closes and then the silence is too long, her admission settling between them.

He summons words and finds them wanting. “I—has it been?”

Josephine is suddenly very preoccupied with unbuttoning her gloves and peeling them off; Cullen becomes preoccupied with watching her. “More or less,” she says carefully, uncommitted.

It takes all his will not to say _amen._ “You counted,” he states instead, stupidly, expecting his tongue to hang out of his head.

She cannot look at him at all, retying the sash of her coat and casting her eyes at the moonlight coming through his window. Cullen has catalogued the many phases of a flustered Josephine, inspired by the diversity of her responses: unable to tamper the heat of her argument, or debating with raised voice, or overtaken by laughter, or sliding it swiftly under a cool and calm veneer, or carried away in passion by her own ideals. The bluster. The little movements. The pacing. They come and go in accordance.

But this remains completely new, and it makes his heart curl in on itself, a scrap of parchment touched by candle fire. “

“It is in my nature to mark an absence,” she tells him, smoothing down the front of her coat. The snow fell away long ago.

Cullen’s mouth opens to say _of course it is_ , but Josephine clears her throat and meets his eyes with fresh determination. “It is late and you have much to catch up on,” she says, and it takes him a moment to remember the disarray surrounding them. “I have matches.” She rummages in her pocket for her handkerchief and bustles to the tall stand in the corner, going up on her tiptoes to light each wick.

When he met Cassandra on the way back to Skyhold, when she looked in his eyes and clapped him hard on the back and said, _you’re not mad, Cullen, and now we can both go where we can do good_ , that had been relief, the kind of assurance that stems from expertise and trust, good leadership. He’d tried to stymie her with testimony of—the hardness of the Emprise, the way it gritted him into pieces. She’d made him answer questions, inquired about his military movements, his work. And by the end of his story, she’d just shrugged. “A hard time in a hard place,” she told him. “But you’re nowhere near mad.” Somehow, it was exactly what he did and didn’t want to hear.

But here is Josephine, lighting the candles in his office with her long matches, the tender swoops of her hair resting against her cheek, undone from her braid in the harsh wind, how the candlelight illuminates the little marks on her forehead, her cheek, her chin. Warm contentment glows within him. Here they are, in the same room, in the same air.

He blinks, realizing he’s frozen, staring like a sop. _Do something, for the Maker’s sake_ commands his better sense. So he uses the edge of his desk to kneel down, and begins grabbing letters and planting them back on his desk in every which-order. Josephine flits to the doorway, to the corner of his office still occupied by dusty lumber and a broken chaise, to find parchment gathered and scattered. She comes back to his desk with an armful of pages. They have a large and unwieldy pile that consumes a huge portion of his desk.

They stare at it, for a moment’s pause. Neither knows quite what to do.

“Well,” says Josephine. “We can make quick work of it, between the two of us.”

“There’s no need,” Cullen tells her.

She glances at him sideways. “Now, Commander,” she says, pulling up Manon’s stool. She moves too quickly for him to pause and take her chair from the corner. “You will make me haggle.” The corner of her mouth turns up. “I refuse talk of Skyhold till the task is done. Or at least until you sit.” She glances up at him. “Cullen.”

He realizes he is still standing, and slowly goes back down in his chair, an exercise in aching knees. She watches him, every movement, every hesitation. A look like that in anyone else’s eyes might drum his anxiety to a fever pitch, but this is Josephine, Josephine who already knows everything and chooses instead to reach forward, taking a fluttery lump of parchment and shifting it to her side of the desk.

“There’s no need,” he protests, one last time.

“I shall take that as Fereldan for _all my thanks, lady ambassador_ ,” she says, beginning to flip through the letters—answered, unanswered, bits of discarded parchment. She makes extremely quick work of it—her daily correspondence is the stuff of Skyhold legend. He is only beginning to parse through his stack himself when she pauses, blinking at the letter in her lap. “Who is Mia?” she asks.

Dull silence as he gathers his wits and balks. “Mia?”

“Yes,” says Josephine slowly. “Mia Rutherford.”

He narrows his eyes. “I’ve no letters from her.”

She holds it up, a thick packet of parchment between her fingers. “Dated just after we returned from Halamshiral.” Josephine turns the envelope over and over in her hands, a peculiar kind of curious, as though a riddle is hidden in its blank surfaces.

He nearly winces. That is too long. He reaches out, and Josephine hesitates in handing it over, her head still tilted in the question of _who?_ “My sister,” he says quietly, and then the parchment is his.

She sits back in her chair. “Mia,” she says, testing it in her mouth, looking at the letter in his hands. He opens a desk drawer, drops it inside. He remembers receiving it, now, but never opening it—it is entirely possible he looked at it and cast it aside as an undertaking for another evening. It must look awful: a letter from the year before, found in a pile of missives. Discarded. He opens and closes his mouth, and then says, “I—writing her is harder than it seems.”

Josephine only shrugs—the little threads of gold catch the light again with her movement. “It is hard for me to conceive,” she admits. “I write my brother constantly. But talking to him is like talking to a better version of myself.”

“You’ve spoken of them before.” Cullen attempts a none-too-graceful deflection. “They build boats.”

“Laurien holds the business finesse,” Josephine says, “Antoine builds the ships, and Raul chases skirts across Antiva City. But.” She holds up a hand. “Mia. The oldest, yes?”

Cullen nods. “How can you tell?”

“A thick letter, full of worries.” The smile on Josephine’s face dims a little. Cullen winces, and she catches it on his face. “I cast no judgement,” she says. “Are you not close?”

“I can’t say,” he admits. “I haven’t seen in her some years.”

Josephine nods, goes back to the letters in her lap. Long absences are no surprise. “How long?” she asks, setting three letters in his pile of completed missives.

“Ten?” Cullen mulls, squinting as he counts. “No. More. I last saw her just before I earned my shield and my philter.” He pauses. “Fourteen years. I think.”

He sorts one letter, then another, making note of just how many missives seem to be spilling from Caer Bronach. When he glances up, Josephine stares at him across the table in plain horror.

“It’s not so many,” Cullen tries, a flush building up the back of his neck.

“They number enough,” Josephine corrects quietly, “you cannot remember an accurate counting of the years.” She pauses. “Are all Templars so separated?”

“I imagine there are exceptions,” he offers, and Josephine just shakes her head.

“That’s unacceptable.” Her letters are forgotten in her lap.

Cullen bristles, despite himself. “You come from captains, merchants, traders,” he says flatly. “Surely they leave on long journeys.”

“For a year, Cullen.” Josephine tucks her head into her hand, regarding him with a raised eyebrow. “Two, three. Four, if you journey to explore for a king or a prince. It is only longer than that if you sail into death’s arms.”

Cullen is more than a veteran of that journey, but he keeps it to himself. “Your pity is misguided,” he says, stronger than he means. “I am hardly extraordinary in my absence. I have yet to find a family who isn’t missing someone to the ranks of somewhere or other.” He sorts a few missives. “That’s just the way of it.”

He busies himself with unfolding a crumpled letter—an old report on bridge-building in the Western Approach, outdated by another letter he’d read earlier in the afternoon.

And then, a touch.

Feather-light against the back of his hand, resting on his worn knuckles.

“I meant no pity.” Josephine’s voice. Gentle and completely unyielding. “But occasionally your life breaches the limits of my imagination.”

Cullen refuses to look at where her fingertips touch him—the darkness is gone, isn’t it? The shadows that cover them and let them speak plainly. They are the commander and the ambassador now, going through letters.

But even that small touch makes his heart race. “You miss your family,” he says.

“Every day.” Her earnest tone is wistful. “I did not mean to declare you could not miss yours.”

A pause then. Cullen exhales, the momentary tension dissipating. She does not move her hand, and he does not move his. One of Mia’s books from his childhood might describe it as a cast spell, a magical unfurling, a spark.

It’s none of those things. Everything tilts, pivots into new air, spins in concentric orbit around one small, simple touch. Suspended in their own world, where he can never track what will next be said.

“Tell me of them,” she asks, suddenly. Case in point.

He cocks his head. “Hardly scintillating,” he answers, nose wrinkling. “I would not bore you.”

“Mia,” Josephine begins, undaunted, “the oldest. Fereldan, still?”

“South Reach.” The details rest clumsily in his mouth. He cannot remember the last time he spoke of them to anyone. “They work a smithy, she and her husband. Two children, neither taller than my knee. And they watch out for the rest of us.”

Josephine’s eyes widen. “There are more of you?” she asks.

“We don’t hold up against your generation’s numbers,” he says, and she chuckles. “But Branson and Rosalie are young and mostly useless.” Her eyes crinkle up at the edges.

“I can imagine it perfectly,” Josephine says, and her hand still has not moved from his. “Four parts for a golden-haired choir. Your village Chantry must have been _thrilled._ ”

That makes him laugh, makes him ease. “My father tried his best,” he said, “but Branson sounds like a goose on the best of days, and Mia is too practical to enjoy it.”

“A waste of potential,” she sighs. “So many children, so little payoff.”

“Ah,” Cullen says, “I imagine generations of bountiful Montilyets can all curtsey in unison, no matter what country they stand in.”

She grins. “The Montilyets were hardly bountiful until the arrival of my mother,” Josephine tells him. “It’s one of the struggles of the line—they could barely produce an heir a generation. Dry as a desert. But my mother changed everything.” She raises an eyebrow. “One of eight.”

Cullen’s eyes widen. “Maker,” he says. “You could invade a country.”

“They should have,” Josephine agrees. “They’re legend, in Antiva. _Otto de Notortiano._ ” She sighs, sits back a little, but the touch never breaks.

“Legend enough they have their own moniker.” Cullen raises an eyebrow. “Accomplished across Antiva, then.”

“Let’s see.” Josephine’s brow wrinkles, summoning memories. “Two married merchant princes, became royalty—well, not true royalty. But the merchants hold Antiva’s reins, not the monarchy. And… yes, one captained a fleet for the king’s navy, with her twin as her first mate. Another owned her own treasure hunting enterprise, and another was a pearl-diver. The oldest owns a huge piece of land in the northern part of the country and holds a silverite mine.”

“And the last?” Cullen prompts. “Your mother?”

“Ambra de Notoriano,” says Josephine, “married a poor artist, an heir to an old merchant house with nothing but a crater’s worth of debts to his name.” She’s no longer smiling.

“The mysteries of the Maker’s plans,” Cullen says, and she glances up at him. “At least they made you.” She blinks. It numbers amongst one of the stupidest things he’s ever said. “To teach the Inquisitor to dance, of course, and save a whole country. And to keep candle and quill-makers in business.”

She snorts, a sound so incredibly undignified it sets him to grinning.

“Praise His name,” she echoes. “What a burden I carry.” She gently slaps his desk with an open palm. “How do you do this?” she asks. “I am trying to ask about your family and here I am, in monologue about my own.”

Cullen laughs. “I don’t have much to say,” he admits. “Not a scandal in sight.”

“How Fereldan,” she says. “How boring.” But the sentiment doesn’t reach her eyes. There is a point of light, there, a light to explore all the darkest places.

“Ah, well,” Cullen shrugs, ignoring the anxious prickle beginning up his spine. There is so much she does not know, and so much that would rather let rot. “It’s not much of a story. It’s my life.”

Josephine sighs, a gentle, exasperated sound. “I know,” she says, going back to the pile of letters in her lap.

And then, her touch moves, soft as a miracle. She strokes her fingertips along the back of his hand.

It’s idle, sweet—she doesn’t even notice the motion, perhaps—but it happens again, and again. It sends shivers dancing up his arm. He will not shudder. He _won’t._ He suppresses all movement, praying to whoever can hear that the flush creeping up his spine doesn’t show on his face. There is a letter on his desk. It’s from Rylen, backdated on some scholar they found kicking around in the desert. He reads the same sentence, over and over, over and over.

Calluses rest at the tips of her fingers. Soft enough they barely count, but calluses still. Made letter by letter and missive by missive. They sweep against his skin, fine as a paintbrush. With every pass, the world grows brighter and he remembers, with each caress—it’s not a caress, but it is, he lacks finer words for gentle gifts—he is here, he is here with her, and in this moment, at least, until she realizes her actions and withdraws her hand.

But she is speaking. “Cullen?” The conversation rolls along without him.

He blushes. “Forgive me,” he says. “What did you say?”

She returns with a smirk. “Your brain is still in thaw.”

“I readjust to human comforts,” he admits. “But I have all my facilities about me.”

“So you say.” Her fingers continue their idle back-and-forth, rotating into small circles perched above his knuckles. Each circle paints a target, as though Cullen would not offer his hand again and plead for repetition. He is dying, he thinks. He will melt away like a pillar of snow, like a woebegone lover in a tragic children’s story. “What are you most glad of?”

“Walls,” he admits, and she laughs.

“Walls,” she agrees. “There’s a certain lack of them out in the field.”

“And company,” he says, without thinking.

“Oh?” she blinks, surprised. “I doubt Dorian and Trevelyan were unworthy companions.”

“Not at all,” Cullen says sheepishly. “I only—I meant there was a certain lack of… desperate arguing.” He clears his throat. “I associate it with home.”

Those fingers pause. Cullen’s heart goes wild, then silent. He’s fumbled it, said too much, or too little, or both, somehow. Her eyes widen, and her fingers pause, as though she will pull away.

 _Not yet._ He turns his hand, catches his thumb around hers, fingertips sliding under her wrist. Whether it is plea or prayer is beyond him. _Not yet._

“A lack of fraught discussion,” he murmurs, casting his eyes down at the desk. “A certain resilience in my sparring partner. Much goes unsaid.”

He could easily be speaking of Cassandra, yet they both know that’s not what lies in the quiet.

“That is all you require?” Josephine’s voice is so soft. They tread in the hazy space they so often occupy now, where language doesn’t suit and every word, every motion holds entirely different meaning. Her hand curled in his is precious weight, unbalancing everything.

It stirs Cullen to find his courage and looks up at her. “No,” he murmurs. Her head tilts, searching him. “But it compelled me to find my way back.”

It changes the very air. Josephine glances down at where their hands touch.

“Might we speak,” she asks, “about that?”

“I’d rather not,” he answers, too quickly.

“Cullen,” she presses.

His hand moves before he wills it, pulling away from her. A mistake: his heart clenches hard as a fist. Her fingers tighten reflexively against his, just once. Minute as the beat of a pulse.

But she lets him go, lets him regroup.

“You look… as though you did not eat the entire time you were gone,” Josephine informs him. “You move as though weighed down by every stone from here to the Waking Sea, and you—“

She touches her own head, just above her ear. Where he now sports a scar, winding down his scalp. It is mostly unnoticeable now, having healed, his hair smoothed over it. But of course—she cannot miss it. Maker, even in the dim light. Panic rises in his throat—he will not specify where that injury came from. She cannot know, and she will not, even if he has to bite his tongue in two.

Cullen goes for the easiest defense. “No,” he says, with a shield’s brusqueness.

Her eyes settle on him, unconvinced. Cullen knows what is coming. Swift and unfailing, a warrior’s anticipation. The arc of the blow before it strikes.

Josephine reaches down by her feet and deposits the packet she came in with: a report. Scrawled in Chantry-neat writing the front is

_Final Report on the Liberation of Emprise du Lion_

_Clarine Trevelyan, Inq._

_Completed 13 Guardian, 9:40 Dragon in Val Royeaux, Orlais._

They both look at it, unable to look at each other. He prays with sudden fervency to the Maker that it does not say _Commander Cullen joined us late from the Emerald Graves. Bruised and beaten, wounded at the head._

She flips open the report with steady hands and Cullen sees where she has dog-eared pages. “ _Commander Cullen takes meals alone. I suspect he does not eat._ ”

Page, page, page. “ _Commander Cullen began his siege on the Tower of Bone yesterday. The dead pile high, few of them ours. His skill in cracking their defenses must come from his time among them. He mentioned in passing recognizing some of the faces of those put to the sword._ ”

He watches her slide her fingers between the pages and open to a new section, well-worn already. “ _The effects of red lyrium upon our forces vary distinctly. There is more in-fighting, more restlessness. Most of our templars have been sent back to Skyhold. They report hallucinations and grave physical discomforts. One described it as ‘a long-fingered demon, picking at my veins with fingernails. Hives under the skin. Hard to eat, hard to sleep, hard to breathe.’ Commander Cullen maintains he is unaffected. I believe this to be a sham. I watched him nearly pull his sword on a shadow yesterday, after a skirmish. As though it reached out and touched him with human hands.”_

Cullen’s hands ball into fists. “That’s enough,” he grits out.

“How could you go?” Josephine asks him simply, hands folded over the report.

“I did not understand the extent of the effects.” He stares at the report until the words begin to waver in front of his eyes. “It does not matter. She is out of line. This entire—conjecture—is completely out of line. Unacceptable in the extreme, for an official report.”

“Perhaps,” Josephine says, but Cullen interrupts her, in no mood for sense in the face of the day’s weariness.

“This—rambling—” He jabs the thick report, “changes nothing. Does it say I faltered in my duty?”

Josephine’s nostrils flare.

“Does it?” he pushes, having found an opening to her frustration.

“No.” Her shoulders tense a little under her coat.

“Does it say I was too addled to order our troops? To deliver a succinct strategy? To lift my sword in defense of the Inquisition?” His voice rises with each demand, but it does absolutely nothing to tamper her demeanor.

She shakes her head once, calm.

“Then Trevelyan has no right to paint me in pity,” he sneers. “And no right to share it with you, when she barely spoke of it to me.” His hands close into fists on his desk. “She is a mage, Josephine. A mage with a templar companion. She knows better than most what lyrium does to an empty body, red or no.”

“So you knew.” Her eyes level him, and he stares right back without answer. “What it might do. You knew, and you went.”

“She ordered it. Do you refuse duty, Josephine, when it seems uncomfortable?” It’s a terribly unfair thing to say, but she barely raises an eyebrow. “When suffering might follow? I don’t _care._ It is pain. It comes, it goes, and I am still sitting here.” He is shaking now, tremors that start from his hands and travel up his shoulders. Anger spins him like a wheel. “Trevelyan knows that. So when she beckoned, I went.”

“Do not pin this on her.” Josephine shakes her head. “You still said yes. Just because she extended the opportunity does not bind you to take it.”

“Then I am guilty. Call for the sword, if you want.” His voice rasps against the stone surrounding them, rough even to his ears. “I made a poor decision. It will not be the last.”

“Why did you not tell me?” she asks suddenly, her voice unwavering. “You lack the ability to refuse the Inquisition. I can—understand it. But I—” She cuts herself off, swallows. “I told you I knew. I told you I knew what happened to the Templars there. I gave you an opening. A hand.”

 _But you did not take it._ It hangs there, bitter and empty and all too true.

“’I am well enough,’” she recounts. “’Do not worry for me overmuch.’” When her gaze finds his, it steals the breath from his lungs. “I did not believe you. Not for a moment. I thought it would come, eventually. But no. Nothing.”

“Then you should not be surprised to learn of it from Trevelyan’s report, and not from my mouth.” He runs a hand over his face.

“Do you know what it was like to read this?” she asks, and for the first time a thin crack runs through her voice. It hurt her, he knows it, and it clips him like a pommel to the ribs.

Still a blow. Cullen cannot suffer them without rebuttal. “So now you know how it was to _live it?_ ”

A stark silence follows. His sigh rumbles deep from his chest, weary. “What does it matter where you learn of the truth?”

“We claim to owe each other authenticity. Respect, too, I thought.” He can feel her eyes on him. “If not, at least pick the truth from between your teeth.”

“I do not owe you that.” His hands grip the desk.

A long, long pause.

“You do,” she says quietly. Her steadiness wraps around him like a rope in high waters. “You do. Sorrow, shadows, solitude. All these I can bear.”

 _But not silence._ He rests his head in his hands.

“Josephine.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I cannot speak of this to you. I cannot. Do not ask me. Please.”

No sound at all then. Not for a long time.

Then the soft pattering of her steps away, the sound of Manon’s wooden stool being put aside. She is rising and going. He does not assign her an inch of blame. He has broken the accord between them (and in truth, continues to break it, as long as he journey to the Emerald Graves goes unspoken). But he is beyond sorting through pieces of glass. He will try, clumsily, to reassemble them later. To ask forgiveness. To find his courage. But he has none.

Her little steps make a hard knot form in his throat.

The sound halts. He can picture her at the threshold, but he cannot bring himself to look.

But—instead of the slamming of the door, the loud grinding of wood dragging across a stone-cobble floor echoes in the chamber. Purposeful and long. His head jerks up and Cullen watches Josephine pull her chair all the way from the corner of the room to his desk.

The sound is excruciating. She is making a point.

Josephine sets the chair—rosewood, dawn-pink backing, a chair that isn’t real until she sits upon it—across from him, and settles, folding her legs under herself.

And there she sits, waiting.

“What are you doing?” he asks, finally, voice rough.

“Attempting a tack,” she says, “that will not tear us limb from limb.” She fingers her temple.

“You know it all already.” He nods to the report still lying open between them. “It makes no difference.”

Josephine picks up the thick packet of parchment and drops it on the floor in one smooth motion. Her eyes never leave his. Outside, the wind howls.

“It is not from you,” she tells him, quietly but plainly. “So it’s not what I care about.”

He blinks. She folds her hands in her lap again.

“Begin, perhaps, with what you can bear to say.” Her focus on him does not feel like knife-blades stinging a target. It is different—like an opening of hands. Palms reaching to carry. As though no matter what falls from his lips, no matter how sharp the words, she will catch them. He remembers the calluses on the tips of her fingers. Small and perfect.

“And we will—fumble our way through the rest.” Her voice is tired, but earnest. “We will turn over the stones as you touch them. I—“

She stops, suddenly, and takes a breath. He watches her, body tense as a nocked arrow.

“I am listening,” Josephine says, like a hand closing around his arm.

And then her lips press together, and she’s silent.

It chokes Cullen, the openness of her offer. But she only tilts her head and waits for the truth. How can he refuse to deliver?

And, if truth is truth, this lies there too: in the span of a few minutes she has cleared the air and realigned them in time. The strange magic of Josephine. Even without touch, her words anchor them back into that space, that golden orbit where they rest together.

It is safe. Safe enough, at least, to try. This would have taken weeks, once. Now it takes a handful of moments.

“There was a day,” he starts, and then stops. She waits.

He swallows, finds his tongue, and tries again. “Trevelyan found cages hidden all over the valley. Guarded by templars. Full of people. Villagers—farmers, grandmothers, little children. They stole them,” he says, and after admitting that he has to stand. His leg aches, but he’s too full of nervous energy to sit any longer.

He thinks of rescuing the old woman and that little boy, the rift that yawned into existence just after, and the single-minded justice guiding his blade. He tells her, at least, of the demons. “By the time she arrived,” he says, a little dully, “I cut all of them down but one.”

Josephine only blinks.

He opens and closes his mouth again, and then leans against the stone.

“Cullen,” she says, voice even, “it is a battlefield. I am not offended by the talk of violence.” A trace of amusement, almost. “I am concerned with your total disregard for your own safety.” She raises an eyebrow. “For your own _protocol._ Would you expect any of your captains do to such a thing?”

“No,” he admits.

Josephine nods. “Yet you expect it of yourself.”

He snorts; he cannot help it. “War is about rising above expectations,” he tells her, “not binding yourself between them.”

Her eyes narrow. He breathes in, meets them squarely. “When I see them in—battle,” he mutters, looking out his long, narrow window, “I stop thinking. I forget myself.”

The way she tilts her head indicates she understands he does not mean demons, or enemies, or any other mundane horror of war. He means the Red Templars. He means his fellows.

“All I could think,” Cullen continues, “is the demons were standing between me and where I needed to go. So I broke through.”

A little silence before Josephine says, “What happened after?”

“Trevelyan came and sealed the rift. She told me they’d gone far enough in to find what looked like the entrance to Samson’s hideout.” His voice dulls with recitation. He paces away from the window. “She wanted to wait—I refused. We couldn’t hesitate.”

He can feel her eyes on his back as he paces away. This is unlike them—Josephine is the one who flits, not him. But he can’t stand still.

“The Inquisition couldn’t,” Josephine asks, “or you couldn’t?”

He grits his teeth. “The Inquisition,” he says. “If we knew their hiding place, we had borrowed time at best.”

She stares at him. He looks away and mutters, “I preferred not to wait. But it didn’t matter.”

Her eyes narrow. “Why not?”

“He was gone.” Cullen breathes it out in one toxic exhale. “A few bands of Red Templars left as sacrifice to Inquisition blades. We did not even need additional soldiers to clear the shrine out completely.” He runs a hand over his face.

“No mark or trail?” Josephine inquires.

“It was obvious they’d known for days we would find them. Days and days. Perhaps even since we made camp.” He leans against the wall, his hands behind his back. The tendon in his thigh protests; he ignores it. “They burned everything.”

“So?” She folds her hands in her lap. “I can hardly imagine you didn’t think it was a possibility.”

“ _So?_ ” he repeats, in disbelief. “The effort, Josephine. The time spent, the resources, the _lives._ We were there for months, and—”

“You put a significant halt on his source of red lyrium,” she interrupts, counting the points on her fingers. “You retrieved tools to dismantle his armor. Freed the people there of his hold on their lives.”

Cullen sets his jaw into a hard line and only gives a nod.

“Yet you speak of it like you engaged in folly and failure,” she continues. “Why?”

“I am allowed to be indignant on behalf of the work of my soldiers,” he grits out.

She waves a hand. “What did you tell them? That your goal was to catch Samson like a rat in a larder?” She wrinkles her nose. “I doubt it. The report says, _liberate the Emprise._ Is that not accomplished?”

“You don’t understand.” The phrase sits in him, a tool he can always reach for with her even as day by day, month by month, it works less and less frequently.

Josephine adjusts herself in her chair before dropping her head to rest on her hand. “Cullen,” she says, “you’re not angry for them.”

Her words electrify him better than a lightning bolt to the crown of his head. It hurts, how deep it hits, and the wave of anger rising in response makes him close one of his fists. He opens and closes his mouth, and he sees her lean forward in her chair.

“You’re angry at yourself,” she says, making her voice softer so he has to stop, he has to listen.

He still can’t speak. She swallows, goes on. “If you asked me why a man—a man rattled by lyrium, a man strongly affected by the presence of templars—goes willingly, without question, where both live in excess…”

She trails off.

“What would you say?” His voice is rough, and unlike his own.

“He is a man living on anger like air,” she murmurs, and his heart fractures. “Sold a false bill of goods by many mouths. Told forgoing his limits is not only the proper means of penance, but the only. Forgiveness, always just out of reach, to keep him working.” She worries at her bottom lip with her teeth. “Nothing fuels blindness better.”

Cullen takes a breath, scoured clean by a tongue of flame. “What a selfish man,” he says.

“No.” He’s not looking at her, but he can feel her eyes on him. “Only a human one.”

He exhales. “That’s not good enough.” He turns and paces back to the desk. “I swore to give the Inquisition everything. Including my life, if necessary.”

“Didn’t we all?” She raises an eyebrow. “Are your vows somehow more insistent than Leliana’s, Cassandra’s?” Her fingertips drum the arm of the chair. “I never thought of Cassandra as _less_ because she does not insist on defeating all her dragons by herself, but perhaps my opinion needs realignment.”

Cullen blanches. “That’s not what I said.”

“Isn’t it?” Josephine says. “We are all the Inquisition. Your actions speak for us. And your actions say, _worthiness means to battle your demons in solitude._ ”

But she falters on this as Cullen stares at her. Perhaps she hears a shadow of hypocrisy in it. “But I offered to listen,” she says, sitting back in her chair. “I’ve said my peace.”

It is a lie, of course—no doubt Josephine has only begun to say what she means to say.

“We found a Tranquil there,” Cullen mutters. “Maddox. He drank a bottle of nightshade, died while Trevelyan spoke to him. To protect Samson. To protect his secrets.”

She nods, lips pursed. He knows she thinks _a wasted life._ That much was in the report.

“Maddox is the reason Samson was exiled from the Order,” he says, voice so quiet she must lean forward a little catch all his words. “Samson helped him pass—love letters. Our Knight-Commander discovered them. She gave Maddox the brand, and turned Samson out.

“Compassion,” Cullen says, then stops. He tries again. “It began—this. Now he rages across Thedas. Blood for a new world.” This sits between them. Josephine never looks away. “A better one.”

“He does it out of love,” Josephine murmurs.

The word itself makes Cullen flinch—impossible, _impossible_ to conflate the long claws of the Red Templar order, scoring every inch of the south with blood, with—that.

“We shared a room,” Cullen says, “at the Gallows. We shared everything. And I—I have to know.”

She tilts her head. He looks at her hands.

“How is it,” he breathes, “that I sit here, on this side of the world, and he does not.”

Only the Maker knows how the board is set—an answer that used to comfort Cullen has long since lost its potency. It is too much: pieces of opportunity scattered all over the floor, inching so close to Cullen’s past he can feel her breath on his memory, feel her fingers upon them—

A thousand questions weave themselves into that single query, bound by a truth Cullen tastes in his mouth every morning when he wakes: everything he has ever done has fallen into pieces.

He paces back to the chair. He cannot resist the pull of her, cannot deny that every step closer to her presence is a clear breath to the head.

He sits, meets her eyes squarely.

“Cullen,” Josephine says, plain as day, “no one can answer that but you.”

The last thing he wants to hear. He sits with it for a long, long silence before the huff of a bitter laugh escapes from the corner of his mouth.

“I know that,” he mutters. “The Maker’s silence only confirms it.”

“Or,” Josephine offers, “consider there may be no answer.”

Cold twists his stomach, and his muscles go stiff with the agony of that possibility.

“Perhaps that is why I went.” His mouth is dry.

She pulls her chair a little closer to the desk. “To prove you belong here?”

 _To prove I am as weak as I feel._ “Because I do not know how to refuse. Because I believe in the crucible of the battlefront.”

“And are you stronger now?” Her voice, curious and quiet. She leans forward, her elbows on the desk.

He drops his head to the wooden surface with a muffled _thunk._ “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know if that place is the better or the worse for my being there, or if it is, but in exchange began my own unmaking. I don’t know if it was worth it, despite the good made there, or if Leliana’s people might have done the work for us at a lower cost of life, or what I should have done—”

The smallest of touches on his hair. Fingertips gently rest upon his head. The weight of her palm. The motion immediately quiets him.

It does not eliminate a single problem—the void between them on this yawns wider than either can probably imagine. No conversation can solve Cullen or his failures.

But her touch speaks to him, when her words fall on his unwilling ears. It does not say, _I forgive you_ , or _we forgive you_ , or even _I understand, now._ She will never seek to absolve Cullen of his wrongdoings: she never has. He knows she never will. The reassurance of this unbendable fact is more earnest comfort than anything else he’s been told.

Instead, it says, _I am here_. Her thumb gently sweeps back and forth—once, twice, again. On the third pass it finds the scar behind his ear and lingers there.

The symmetry, the perfection of that touch blinds him. _That is yours_ , he almost confesses, defiance on his tongue. The scar he earned for her, and no one else. He will defend its worth until he can no longer stand. _It is the mark you have made on me._

And in the quiet, in the pause they have made together, new words weigh on the tongue. They bubble to the top of his soul, impurities finding the sun.

“I can’t ever go back there.” The admission slips from Cullen’s lips on a breath. The first moment to follow is horrible. Empty. Saying it shifts a weight lying like a smithy’s block in his chest. Nothing breaks free or shatters.

The pad of her thumb runs a line against the scar. “And the world still stands,” Josephine whispers. Warmth lines her voice—relief, perhaps, unnamable. His eyes close tight.

They sit there like that for a long while. The report still lies on the floor. The silence does not hurt. It is perfect in its uncertainty, in the roughness of its edges. It is whole.

Cullen ignores the rattling of the door until it bursts open, a messenger with letters for Josephine in tow. They all freeze for the span of a breath before Josie reaches, hand outstretched, for her letters, and Cullen raises his head without a sound.

The messenger practically sprints from the office. Spell broken, Josephine stands and excuses herself, cradling her hand as though it holds a wound. He stares at the threshold long after she goes.

The ease and comfort of that silence, of her fingers stroking his hair, never leaves him. Even as he prays and fumbles into bed, the candle-flame woken by her presence never flickers. And a thought, rushing in and out of his lungs with every breath, long into the night. _We were ourselves._

 

* * *

 

 

 _By the time you read this,_ Josephine writes, her candle burning lower and lower, _I will have undoubtedly done something very foolish._

A cup of wine sits empty on her desk—a cup that has been filled and refilled twice since beginning this letter to Laurien, and yet she has only a sentence.

_I rely upon the many miles between us to give me the wherewithal to speak of this to you—to you, yes, all people. As though I could even pretend to hesitate to tell you anything._

Josephine fills her cup again, halfway. She sits back in her chair and looks at the parchment. Gathers her courage. She thinks, with a brief nod to memory, on past lovers.

Marya, the merchant ship’s captain. Hands like a pirate’s, always covered by the most beautiful gloves Josephine ever witnessed. Leather from Antiva, Rivaini silk. She never took them off—not at night, not while they wound about between the sheets. Strange, at first. Then Josephine grew to love them, grew to understand Marya slipped them on when the land holding Josephine floated into view across the water. Knew in her mind it meant home. Each step, each tiny opening in their courtship felt like a march across a battlefield for Josephine—left her flushed with victory. She had been reluctant. The perusal was exquisite.

And before her, Ruenan, one of the Rivaini queen’s many seneschals, lingering in Celene’s court under the cover of new trade agreements. That had been a dance of _yes_ and _no_ , as both feigned disinterest only to heighten the game. But even then, the sweetness of it had been in the push and pull, the way they always knew exactly where they stood, even as they spoke of nobles’ squabbles and arranged shipments of Orlesian gold.

But this—this. It is unlike them both in every sense. Never has Josephine breathed with such hesitation.

She picks up her quill pen, dabs it in the inkwell.

_We have no tools for this, Laurien. We have spent more than a year discovering everything we can use to break each other, to hurt, to rend and reave. All these pieces sit between us, like knives waiting for a hand. And it that same vein—anything to repair, to build, to excavate and understand. To know. It all lies there, side by side. Thread and hammers. Needles and bandages._

_What do I take for this task? How do I unwind myself from him?_

The wine is gone. The tips of her fingers tingle, tiny bursts of warmth and flame. Oh, tonight. Tonight. What an incredible mess.

To come into his office, a mission pressing on her heart, and there he was. Whole enough, breathing, and looking at her like a blind man encountering his first candle flame. Everything before she insisted on the Emprise feels hazy, a dream far beyond memory that weighs on the mind with its presence.

But she could not forget what she had read. Most of what she knew transpiring in the Emprise came second-hand from Leliana. The Inquisitor’s reports were always perfunctory at best. And then, she had sat, and read, and—raged.

Each horror numbered worse than the last. The prisoners in cages. The villagers, decimated by tragedy after tragedy before Corypheus even entered their lives. There are higher points—the performance of the Wardens, for example, was well-received. They did not lose many of their number. Peace, at the end of the day, was restored. Supply routes move smoothly. Infrastructure, slowly rebuilt. A grand demon, even, for Cassandra to kill with the help of Celene’s former champion. All things set in place for legend.

And then there is her accounting of Cullen.

It is not appropriate. She can agree with him on that much. But she cannot see what tack Trevelyan is supposed to take, other than ignoring an obviously growing issue in front of her face. She can even picture the conversation—an innocent inquiry, shut down by Cullen’s brusque sense of duty.

There is so much. It nearly overwhelmed her, sitting there, watching him page through it like an old holy tome in his brain. What to say. What not to say. What he can bear to say. How coppery and fine his pain is, lingering like the taste of blood in her mouth.

And how simple it had been to simply open her hands and say, _go on._ To say it was simple is not to say it was easy, or uncomplicated, or peaceful. Only that it had to be done.

She picks up her pen again and writes a truth.

_I touch him as though he is mine._

_I have done it twice in as many hours, without even thinking. Words fail, and then I move. It is not what colleagues do. It is not even what friends do._

In her mind, as certainly as anything she knows, she can picture Laurien reading this letter. A smirk might curl at the corner of his mouth. A dry chuckle may escape from under his breath. But mostly, she knows he will shake his head with a solemn acceptance.

_We have touched before. Nothing untoward. Nothing without pretense. But now I am devoid of all excuse. I know what you wonder: does he recoil? Does he flinch? Or does he blush as though he is a maiden, and I am a prince?_

She decides she will burn the letter later. This is merely an exercise in self-flagellation. It seems to suit the theme of the day.

_He settles beneath my hand, Laurien, like he belongs there. And perhaps a little of the last, if I am to be honest. It eases him. It eases me._

Perhaps too much. She remembers, as though the memory slides over hand as a glove does, the way he took her wrist as they spoke, the refusal to relinquish her. How the flesh requests when the voice cannot. _No,_ said the touch. _Do not stop._

The tousled softness of his hair.

She bids herself not to think of it, just as she stares at her own hand, and remembers.

She can catalogue them, an ambassador amassing a list of her own letters and communications. Each moment a step in achieving a treaty. His hand, curved about her hip at the Winter Palace. The touch of his lips against her palm. An outstretched palm filled with pins. The brush of an arm against hers as he passes through a chaotic ring of practicing soldiers.

She arranges and rearranges the moments, puzzling a cypher. Threaded through it is her pride, the straps of her control over her life, their quickness to anger, his fortitude, his stubbornness, his grace, her grace, the strange perfection of any room when they are suddenly together.

Regardless of the order or the pattern of the weaving, the answer is always the same.

_How to stop is beyond me. I do not know how._

~~~

So. They do not speak for a handful of days. A break for breath seems wise.

Cullen arranges an appointment with Lysandre, and Josephine appears in his office a neat forty-five minutes before, to discuss and update him on her work with the Wardens.

More sleep under his bones, today. His face is less wan. No sun through the long, slender window of his office. She is careful not to sit. That seems to spell distraction and disaster.

“Leliana mentioned the Inquisitor is in Val Royeaux,” is the first thing he says, head buried in some long parchment report. His tone is merely curious. “Why?”

“She visits a minister of justice on my behalf,” Josephine replies. “The last piece of the puzzle before this long business with my family and Orlais is over.” She undoes the buttons of her coat. “She’ll be appearing at a party, bedecked in finery.”

A sly smile curls at the corner of Cullen’s mouth.

She puts a hand on her hip. “Yes?”

“I’m just remembering Halamshiral,” he says. “When you could not watch her dance with the duchess without someone pressing you to breathe.”

He is gracious to say _someone_ instead of _me._ “I think,” Josephine admits, “she enjoys it just a hint more than she lets on.” She hangs her coat up, smoothing the sleeves. “The Orlesians find her intriguing. We talk of it as a battle, now, with targets to hit and demons to side-step.”

Cullen sets down the letter, signing with a quick scribbling of ink at the bottom. “You must be relieved.” The way he says it—a curious detachment. A hollowness. He himself is far from it.

“I will be relieved when the revoked contract sits in my hands,” she informs him, an eyebrow raised. “And not a moment before.”

“I agree.” He folds the letter, seals it with wax from his candle. That sounds more like him. Josephine mulls this over for a moment, and then opens her mouth to ask, _you never told me who you sent to the graves,_ but he pushes on before she can speak.

“I have waited long enough, I think,” he says mildly, “for this tale of your miracle-working with Lysandre.”

Josephine pushes her own questions to the side and approaches his desk, laying out the entire story. All Lysandre told her—about her past, the magebane, her requests.

“I was so mistaken,” Cullen says, looking fairly leveled by the story of Lysandre’s past. “I thought she merely dismissed you out of disregard for your status. Resistance to the idea of… nobility.”

Josephine shakes her head. “She _is_ me. Or perhaps that’s just how she sees it.” She crosses her arms across her chest.

“I thought it strange,” he continues, “that she chose to respect me. I hold a rank, just as she does, but most mages are uneasy with me as the head of their fighting legion.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “I suppose _noble_ supersedes _former templar._ ”

“Is that something people do?” Josephine asks, suddenly desperate to talk about it. “With the magebane. Families, trying to suppress magic in children.”

Cullen sighs, fingering the pen lying on his desk. “It does not surprise me,” he finally says. “I—when I was trained, they talked frequently of family harm. That it was important for templars to find mage children, to take them to circles where they would be safe.” Then that lies in the air, an utmost untruth in the light of day.

“I didn’t know what to think,” she admits. “It’s quite barbaric.”

Cullen shuffles uneasily in his seat, chose not to continue. But Josephine taps her fingertips to his desk. “What?” she invites.

“I know just how barbaric,” he says. “And I—I agree.”

She considers him: the commander of their forces, a man taught to disrupt and suppress. That was his life, once. He catches her thinking about it, reads her eyes like a book.

“Josephine,” he begins, gaze dropping back to his desk. “The other day—”

She folds her arms again immediately. “Apologize and I will leave,” she tells him, no patience for it.

He sits back, blinking. “It’s unfair to you,” he said.

“Do you ever listen to the things that come out of your mouth?” she wonders aloud.

He opens his mouth to speak, but she interrupts him. It’s rude, but she no longer cares.

“We have spoken of this more than once now. I don’t know what it will take for you to hear me.” She raises her eyebrow. “You mean to apologize, sweep it under the rug. Never to be voiced again between us.” She stares at him. “Do you deny it?”

He glances away.

“Do not insult me,” she says, irritated, “by asking me to pretend.”

And then the door opens, and Lysandre entered.

“I see,” Lysandre says, slowly looking Cullen up and down, “the Emprise left a few teethmarks in you.”

“Only teethmarks,” Cullen says, “and, gratefully, no teeth.”

Lysandre almost smiles. What a marvel.

Josephine stands at Cullen’s side, having pulled her chair over for their guest.

“The Wardens report,” she continues, her iron-grey hair tied up in an impeccable coif, “they enjoyed their work in the Emprise du Lion.”

Josephine raises an eyebrow, but Cullen only exhales. “The cold must be a pleasant alternative to the Deep Roads.”

Lysandre catches Josephine’s eyes. “Have you told him of my demands?”

“I have, Warden-Constable,” says Josephine, her hands behind her back.

There is a pause as they wait for someone to speak first.

“The Wardens follow you,” Cullen says bluntly. “Every Warden I spoke to in the Emprise praises your name, your leadership. I can’t demote you.”

Lysandre straightens against the back of the chair. “You can’t promote or demote me, Commander.”

“True,” agrees Josephine. “But—we need more. You say you are too like Clarel, but I cannot see the sense in cutting your tether to the Wardens.”

“And the others,” Cullen says, “don’t hold your stature. No one makes for a suitable replacement.”

Josephine remembers one of them spitting on the floor of Cullen’s office. Even if she’s difficult to predict, Lysandre at least understands the power of presence.

But she glances down at the arm of the chair now, where her long, worn fingers curl around the wood. Josephine turns it over and over in her mind, a stone worn smooth by her thoughts. The reason is somewhere between _nonsensical_ and _not good enough._

“Still,” says Lysandre, and lets it lie.

The way her hands stirs again. The anxious way her thumb traces a circle onto the wood. Josephine knows that thumb, knows that motion. It strikes as suddenly as lightning, and just as clear.

“You and Clarel,” she says, with utmost care, with all the grace she can muster, “were connected.”

The fidgeting of her hand pauses.

Cullen makes a noise—she doesn’t even need to see his face to know the confused look growing across it. _Catch up_ , she bids, almost rolling her eyes.

“Close enough you fear they will mistake you for her,” she says.

Cullen, in a pause of understanding, straightens. “You were lo—”

Josephine’s hand goes to his shoulder, to metal and fur mantle. Not quite a slap, but firm. “Linked,” she interrupts, watching Lysandre’s nostrils flare. “Linked.”

“Just so,” says Cullen, and from this angle, she can watch the flush stain the back of his neck. She thinks smoothing her fingertips over the warm skin before bearing down, focusing on the problem in front of them.

Lysandre gives a nod and rolls her shoulders, examining them both with a level gaze. Testing what they will do with the information.

Josephine can’t explain it, but it delights her to no end. From sole to scalp. How utterly fitting, how perfectly it turns. _The torch passes from queen to queen._ Just as it should be.

This is, of course, before she remembers Clarel is dead, her name universally besmirched and spat upon from here to the very edges of Orlais.

“It will be impossible to repair our reputation if I stand at the helm,” Lysandre says.

“No one else suits,” says Cullen, all faith and iron. “I will not put an unworthy sword at the head of the Wardens. The politics can hang.” There is a pause. Josephine raises an eyebrow. “For you, at least,” he finishes. “Let the lady ambassador do what she does best.”

Lysandre suppresses a snort and folds her hands in her lap. “Of course,” she says. “ _Smoothing._ ”

“Weaving a better Thedas,” Cullen corrects, tone just as certain as it was a moment ago. “And making room for you and I in it.”

The turn of phrase astonishes Josephine. She opens and closes her mouth, but before she can say a thing, three knocks echo from the door. A runner bursts in unbidden, at attention and out of breath.

“Soldiers at the gate,” he tells them, wheezing

Cullen stands up quicker than Josephine has ever seen him move, striding towards the door. “Who?” she asks, but he is already out the door before the runner can answer, and she chases him across the bailey to the wide stone steps.

Leliana already stands at the foot of the stairs, a brace of archers at her back and her bow ready. They walk to the gate. Cullen orders the archers in place up on the parapets.

“Knights,” she informs them, the epitome of calm. “They’re here to speak to the Inquisitor.”

Josephine knows what Leliana is going to say, but she asks the question anyway. “About what?”

“’The events of Adamant Fortress.’” Now her tone turns grim. “They claim Celene’s approval.”

They go up the stairs to the chamber leading out to the gate. Cullen orders two squads of footsoldiers on either side, Manon in particular at the ready, before they disappear inside the nook. Lysandre follows with the slowest of steps.

They take turns carefully looking out at the intruders through a thin slat. Men and women dressed in steel laden with gold filigree. Their leader holds a heavy shield and sword. Josephine cannot tell much about them, but Cullen grits his teeth.

“Lysandre,” Josephine says, leaning against the wall, “your thoughts?”

She crosses her arms, nose wrinkled at the smell of rot. “I won’t talk to upstart knight errants,” she states. “And the Chantry can drown itself, for all I care about it.”

“Excellent.” Josephine touches her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “Makes our task all the easier.”

“And what task is that?” Leliana asks. Her tone is too innocent for Josephine’s taste.

“Do not let them pass.” She smooths her skirts. “I’ll be out to greet them.”

A pause. Leliana raises an eyebrow. Cullen stares. “No,” he says.

Josephine casts her eyes down on the floor; she hears him sigh.

“Leliana,” she murmurs, “will you take a stand on the parapets, perhaps with Lysandre?” She glances at the warden. “If you will not deign to speak with them, I entreat you to at least view your enemy.”

Leliana, in turn, tilts her head and squints. “Are you really going to do this now?” she asks.

The definition of _this_ remains unknown. “Two minutes,” mutters Josephine, and Leliana motions to Lysandre, heads out of the nook. She closes the door behind her, the weighty slam echoing in Josephine’s teeth.

“If you walk out with me,” Josephine begins, knitting her hands together, “you legitimize their threat—“

“All of them are armed.” Cullen’s voice is surprisingly mild. “Each and every one. They will cut you down if they disagree. You do not bear arms, and I do. That should be reason enough.”

“Dramatic.” Josephine raises an eyebrow. “Invention is not your specialty.”

He snorts. “They are military,” he reminds her. “If I refuse to see them, we say the Inquisition hides in Skyhold like a mouse in a hole.”

“It would seem to _me_ ,” she says, “having to prove we hold the largest sword works in their favor, not ours.”

He cocks his head. Josephine taps her chin. “It’s beneath you,” she admits.

“It’s not a show of power.” Cullen pats the pommel of his sword. “It’s to acknowledge we have it at all. That we don’t bleat like sheep to keep the wolf from our door.” She gives him a look, and his hand rises instantly to the back of his neck. “Not that you bleat.”

“You would know.” She crosses her arms. “A farrier’s son.”

Cullen opens his mouth, maybe to say _you remember_ , but instead shrugs his shoulders. “Bring me with you, Josephine. They are old templars, every one of them. The flaming sword’s been scored off their chestplates, painted over with something new.”

Josephine paces away to glance out the slat again. She can’t tell if he’s right or not.

He thumbs his temple. “I know their loyalties and their tricks. And they’ll know who I am, at least.”

“This is a negotiation,” she reminds him, although it makes more sense than she might admit.

“Precisely.” He looks totally undaunted by the prospect. “You negotiate why they stand here. We buy ourselves time.”

“And you?” she asks.

His eyes narrow. “I remind the wolves a sword lives in Skyhold.”

A little silence, then. Josephine smooths her skirts.

“Well,” she says, “that was quick.”

A smirk curls on his lips, wrinkling the scar there. He glances up at the ceiling. An unpatched hole leaks a pile of snow in the corner. The room itself smells of straw and damp. Broken chairs line a wall. It’s a grubby little room.

“So this is the place,” Cullen says, a mix of wonder and satisfaction.

Josephine cocks her head to ask why before the realization saps all her breath away. Months ago, a winding debate on the battlements, her own words: _if I am north, and you are south, somewhere between us—_

She licks her lips. “Far from perfect, Cullen.” Her voice sounds hollow.

“But workable,” he offers with a shrug.

Josephine cannot speak.

He turns away, glancing up through the broken patch in the roof. A brief moment of winter sun lights his face. “We make do wherever we are,” he says, voice quiet. “We are better together.”

She watches him, unable to look away. Words build on her tongue, too heavy to close her mouth against. “The last time we spoke,” she begins.

He raises a hand. “I should apologize,” he says. “But you banned me.”

A dry little laugh escapes from between her lips. “So I did.”

His posture changes, the lines of him straightening, hardening, bearing down. She watches one of his hands resist curling into a fist, and fail.

Once, Josephine would assume the tension was aimed at her. But Cullen prefers to turn his swords inward.

“You don’t need the burden,” he says.

Josephine takes small, careful steps to breach the distance between them. “It wasn’t.”

“I’ll do better,” he promises. “I’m not another duty to keep you up at night.” She sees him rub a hand over his face. “No more—confessions. No more hardships. You have my word.”

And just like that, the conversation has changed. Josephine finds a hard knot in her throat.

“Do you know,” she says, voice miraculously steady, “this is the first vow you’ve made me I won’t accept?”

She watches her words land, watches him inhale a breath, and hold it.

“The pact you made at my door,” she continues. “All those things you pledged me in the garden. I know each one. Every day without you, my mind rested on them. Every time I see you, I remember.”

How he tenses. _Stop_ , she pleads. _I am here._

“I hear each word,” Josephine murmurs, “each promise, like music.”

His head hangs. “But not this one,” he mutters.

“Cullen,” she whispers, and the power of saying his name makes him turn, slowly, to face her. They are so close, so close the tip of her foot brushes his.

“I don’t want your servitude in exchange for my comfort.” It is a flat, unavoidable truth. “I don’t want it. You owe me nothing. Do you hear me?” Josephine reaches for his fist, takes it between hers before she understands what she is doing. She closes her eyes to listen to his sharp inhale. It trembles in hers. “You owe me nothing. Not your arms, not your blood, not your bones. ”

She looks up at him. She waits, waits even though they have no time, for him to meet her gaze.

Josephine says, “I hold you.” The words echo in her chest as they leave her mouth—how long has she been waiting to voice them? How long have they ached to be said? “Against your enemies, when they come for you. Against yourself, when you are alone. I do not demand your sword or your penance.”

He casts his eyes away; she squeezes that hand to tether him back. “Only know I treasure your voice entwined with mine.” The sound is smaller than a murmur. “Arguing and snickering and declaring things it knows nothing about, and speaking the many things I do not wish to hear. Saying my name.” The fist tenses in her fingers. How she wants to unwind it.

Josephine inhales once and says, “So. Your foes are mine, now. Your demons, my demons. If they come, rely upon me. I will never give them a single inch.” Her mouth is dry, but she has never felt stronger in her life. “Do you trust me?”

“I do.” A rasp at best, but certain as ever.

Josephine almost says, _and I, you_ , but lifts his hand to her lips instead. Her kiss warms the cold leather glove. She promised, after all, to herself. And what is this, if not a tying of vows.

They are so close. How easy it would be to rise up on her tiptoes, to run her fingers against his jaw, to gently tip down his chin, to examine his tired face, to make it glow with astonishment.

A firm series of knocks against the door makes them both jump. Cullen’s sword slides against the stone wall, and Josephine retreats quick as a hare to the other side of the room.

“If you loiter any longer, we will be _invaded_ ,” Leliana calls from outside the door. “If you wouldn’t mind, Ambassador? Commander?”

~~~

They stand shoulder to shoulder, out in front of the gate. Josephine watches Cullen mark Leliana and the others up on the parapets, watches him lean a little on his sword, his hand relaxing on the pommel.

Their leader is a man with a barrel chest, not quite _tall_ , but built like a bronze statue. His face is lily-white, a scar parting his eyebrow, winding across his nose, and ending halfway through cheek. Grass green eyes, bald but for a heavy black beard, threaded with silver.

He doesn’t even look at her. His gold armor gleams, even though the sun hides behind the clouds. Everyone else stands tall in silver and steel: a man with a bow and arrow, another with a two-handed broadsword. A dwarf woman with ruddy red hair and a greataxe on her back. Two human women who look well-enough alike to be sisters, identical shields and swords upon their backs. They look Antivan, if Josephine’s instincts are worth anything, and if this were a party she would delight in entreating them to speak, listening to their accents, placing if they hailed from the coast cities or the Greenlands.

“Knight-Commander Cullen.” Their leader salutes, gold-shackled arm firm across his breast. His voice is scrubbed of accent, but Josephine hears a familiarity in his _r_ that places him in Ferelden. Denerim, perhaps, if Cullen’s voice comes from the country.

Cullen nods his head. “Commander,” he corrects. “And Ambassador Montilyet, of the Inquisition.” Josephine does the same. A little incline.

“To whom do we have the pleasure of speaking?” she begins. The wind whistles high in the air above them.

“Knight-Divine Caradoc,” he says, “of the Templar Order, on mission from the Chantry.”

Cullen tenses beside her. That is her cue. “On what business do you find yourselves so deep in the Frostbacks?” she entreats.

“An audience with the Inquisitor.” His mouth is a thin, hard line, nearly obscured by his wiry facial hair. “We deliver a missive of the highest importance.”

“You must have passed each other on the road,” Josephine says, “as she is still in Val Royeaux. You may deliver your missive to us.”

“It is for her ears only.” His nostrils flare.

“As she said,” Cullen speaks, voice firm, “to us.”

Caradoc pulls a rolled parchment from inside his armor and dramatically breaks the wax seal upon the outside. He unrolls the missive, and sets to reading it with a booming voice. It echoes at times, in the cradle of the mountain.

A cheap trick, Josephine thinks, unimpressed. All of Skyhold would know within the hour without it.

“By order of the high clerics of the Chantry of Orlais, with the support of Her Imperial Majesty, Celene Valmont I, I am under orders to bring the leadership of the Grey Wardens of Orlais to Val Royeaux for to stand trial for their plight against the Orlesian people at Adamant Fortress. Ten Wardens must be brought to stand before the Chantry and answer for their crime.”

“Ten?” Josephine questions, an eyebrow raised. “Surely they know there are over two hundred.”

“We are given powers of investigation, to root out the most grievous of offenders.” He rolls the parchment back up in his hands. “The Inquisitor stated not all can be blamed for the actions of a few.”

They watch each other, Caradoc dead-eyed with his own victory. He smiles. It is nothing. The smile of a man reclaiming his own power. _What were you before this_ , Josephine wonders. She knows nothing of templar ranks. A private. A scullery maid. _Before they all died and had to rummage to find passable soldiers?_

“The Chantry agrees. So we come to shackle the few.” Green eyes glint. He reminds Josephine of a story her mother read to her over and over again as a child. An emperor with no clothes.

The thought strikes a match in her brain. She must find a way to see the missive in his hands.

“Knight-Commander,” Caradoc continues, “if you would be so kind as to show us inside.”

“Commander,” Cullen corrects.

Caradoc waves a hand. “It matters little,” he says,

“Ser Caradoc,” Cullen begins, his voice pinioned with a knife-sharp ice, “the only Templars left in Thedas currently crawl through the south in supplication to an darkspawn bent on rending the Veil into pieces. I do not consider myself one of them. Do you?”

The stiff silence makes Josephine want to bounce up on the balls of her feet, but she doesn’t. A foolish bristle of pride grows in her. _You have him_ , she thinks.

“To deny us is an act against the very Empress of Orlais,” says Caradoc.

“I believe Commander Cullen asked a question,” Josephine mentions, her hands behind her back.

She watches Caradoc grit his teeth and tampers down the curl of victory in her chest. “I do not,” he mutters.

“Then let us refer to each other plainly.” Cullen examines him like a boot examines an ant. “The Chantry has no knights, Ser Caradoc.”

And by extension, no title for the Knight-Divine to wield like a whip. The unique power of it—the man, who by supposition outranks Cullen shoulder to shoulder, does not wilt. But it changes the power between them. It would mean nothing, coming from Josephine. She has no place in that world.

“Ser Cullen,” Caradoc mutters, “I—“

“Commander,” Josephine interrupts, gracefully, a gentle correction she turns into an address, “While you know I welcome any guest to Skyhold, there is not sufficient evidence to breach the gate.”

She knows the curve of his lips well enough to know when he tempers down a grin. “I agree, Ambassador.”

“If I could be privy to the notice,” she begins, and Caradoc interrupts with a snort.

“So you may tear it to pieces?” He regards her as though he has her pinned, somehow, in an invisible game of wicked grace.

“I assure you I handle letters from across Thedas with dignity and care,” she assures him, holding out her palms. “Do these hands look like they tear much in their day-to-day?”

Caradoc shakes his head. “I am to give it only to who directs the Wardens.”

“Then to me, ser,” Cullen asks, in a tone of barely concealed boredom. “Unless you wish to stand here and listen to the wind howl.”

He regards him suspiciously, the bridge of his nose wrinkling the scar.

Cullen holds out a hand. “To me, ser,” he says again, more iron behind it this time. “The Inquisitor commands the Wardens, and in her absence the task falls to me.” He closes his fist and knocks it into his chestplate, arm across his chest, before extending his hand once more. “I swear she will not touch it.”

Caradoc looks at the letter, then looks at Cullen’s hand. He takes two steps, deposits it into his hand, and steps back.

Cullen does not even engage in the affectation of reading it before holding it front of Josephine’s face. Her hands behind her back, she scans the letter quickly, managing it thrice before Cullen murmurs, “Over?”

“Please,” she says, and he turns the letter so she might examine the back and the broken seal.

When she nods, he pulls the letter away. She looks up, and Caradoc’s hand is on his sword. His eyes blaze.

Josephine is not afraid. They face down a powerless child, a man who cannot see he is being duped even in the most obvious of moments.

Cullen crosses the distance with a step, letter in hand. Caradoc reaches out to take it. Cullen does not give. “Both hands,” he says, an unmistakable command.

He waits until Caradoc unwinds his fingers from the hilt, and snatches the parchment back.

“To your satisfaction, then?” he demands. Josephine glances over his shoulder at the faces of his soldiers. They lie blank, unassuming. She can tell the sisters are tracking the wall above them, where Leliana and their forces stand, ready and waiting in case of great disaster.

“We do not serve the Chantry,” says Josephine, all apology. Her hands outstretch, bearing great regrets. “The events of Adamant were cruel. The bloodshed, intolerable. The Inquisition itself lost many at the gates. Our Inquisitor herself was launched into the Fade and hardly escaped. I cannot blame your journey for justice. And you came so far, through such elements.”

Caradoc grinds his teeth. “The Empress—“

“I am sure it is merely a clerk’s mistake,” Josephine says, “but that is not her seal.”

The moment freezes. She feels Cullen tense beside her again. Not out of fear. But here is the moment, when their throats are bared, and it is not his world to understand. But he says nothing. Not even a sidelong glance betrays his uncertainty. It lights her heart better than any match.

“Celene’s clerks bear a seal for the crown,” Josephine explains, as though it is not trouble. “A fleur-de-lis, crowned with the leaves of arbor blessing. Any missive from the Empress’ staff bears it proudly. But it is not her seal.

“A security measure, of course,” she continues, as Caradoc stares. “Or else any clerk might move to make a new peace treaty with Rivain, or appoint a new minister of the treasury.”

“Or start a war,” adds Cullen, lowly.

“Anyone who knows of me knows how long I toiled in Orlais,” Josephine says. “I still have the letter her Imperial Majesty wrote to me, confirming my appointment as the diplomat between Antiva and Orlais. I’ve treasured it for years. Shall I send someone to fetch it, for comparison’s sake?”

The question is posed; she watches his face. “You cited the Empress herself supported this—claim,” she allows with a sure nod. “Multiple times, in fact, even though her name does not appear in the letter. Not even once. So I was sure it would bear her seal.” She smiles gently, understanding. What a tragic mistake. “And yet.”

Caradoc twists the parchment back and forth between his hands. Unconsciously, perhaps. He will rip it, if he continues.

“Celene is our treasured and trusted ally,” she says. “We recognize her importance, her fellowship with us. We heed her every word.” She smiles. “A clerk’s mistake is easily rectified, no?”

Caradoc’s soldiers stare at him. Their faces still bear a blank look, hard and untouchable, but all their eyes bore into the back of his bald head.

“A village rests at the foot of the mountain,” Cullen begins, hands idly resting on the pommel of his sword.

“Ah, yes,” Josephine says. “ _Mosshome._ I believe they have a rather charming inn. You must see it for yourself.” The inn has no mattresses, not yet, but perhaps one day.

“This is treason,” Caradoc says. “They drag your name through the mud in Orlais—the Inquisition thinks it belongs to no one.”

Cullen clears his throat. “We serve all Thedas,” he replies. “Including the Imperial Majesty, who the Inquisitor saved with her own two hands from assassination, and all the Chantry brothers and sisters under Inquisition protection as they serve refugee camps in the south.” He shrugs with a roll of his shoulders. “I write their orders myself.”

“You will find the accommodations to your liking, I think,” Josephine says, smoothing her skirts. “And we eagerly await what the Empress has to say in the meantime.”

A pause. They all stare at each other. Josephine smiles.

“You will want to begin the descent now,” Cullen tells them, “if you want to make it by dark. But I can offer an escort.”

 _It is done_ , Josephine thinks. _Do as you are bidden._

Caradoc’s eyes are hard and cold. He leans to one of the sisters beside him, mutters a few twists of phrase in her ear. Not the common tongue. The effect is instantaneous—her eyes flash, and she pulls her sword.

Cullen does not draw his blade, does not leap in front of her, does not shout for archers. But his hand rests at her back before she can mark the movement, his fingers only just curled around his sword’s hilt.

She stays very still. It is not because the solidness of the touch inspires licks of flame up her spine. It is not because if unchecked she will lean into him and that strength—not out of fear, not yet, but for the sheer pleasure of it. How good his hand feels there. How it belongs.

Caradoc catches his lieutenant’s wrist before her sword makes it halfway out of the scabbard. She hears Cullen exhale a breath between his teeth. The lieutenant slowly sheathes the sword, her eyes piercing as twin arrows.

Josephine can recognize someone to be reckoned with. In this equation, it is certainly not Caradoc.

Cullen’s fingers press against her back, just once. Reassurance. Even when the opposing party begins its slow retreat without a word, he does not remove his hand. The simplicity nearly destroys her. Not a hint of hesitation in it. Just—there is a danger, and he holds her here.

It makes her reel, and when their foes are far off enough, the squeeze of his hand pushes her to move her feet. They go back into the nook. It is not until they are inside that he pulls away, shuts the door behind them.

“Brilliant,” Cullen says, unable to temper his grin. “The seal—is it true?”

Josephine blinks up at him. “Ah—yes,” she answers. “Less leaves on the arbor blessing, a second halo, an _I_ carved into one of the leaves.” She runs a hand over her face.

He pauses. “Are you alright?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. “But I must go and write. There is—too much.”

He can sense it now, her unease. It is not with him. She is remembering what she said a scant hour ago in this room, the promise she made, and just how much she has said. And that unassuming touch of his hand. All the promise it entailed. She finds it hard to breathe.

“Josephine,” he says.

“We have a week at most before they devise a new way in,” she tells him, brushing loosened locks of hair behind her ears. “The clerics grow too bold if they send mercenaries to our door. I have letters that must go out before sundown. We have two hundred of your people to move in just a few days.”

The way he is looking at her hurts. Cullen is a man attuned to burdens, and even were they not so connected he could sense this one like sunlight. Like all the times before, he wants to touch her. She can read it in him like a tome. But he hesitates, without the cover of duty, or shadows, or need.

“We will find a way,” he says, and the reassurance rests upon her shoulder like a hand. It overwhelms her. “That was—you were radiant, in your observations.” His arms rest at his sides.

Teeth in her heart. She nods. “I must go,” she murmurs again, pausing before turning on her heel. “I need to write, if you could speak with Leliana and Lysandre.”

As she leaves, pushing open the door back out into Skyhold, he says her name once more. It follows her, a ribbon tying itself around her wrist, lingering at her side as she pads through the snow, up the stairs. Even as she nods to Briony, dodges her questions as to what happened, and sequesters herself in her office, it does not leave her. Not once.

~~~

Josephine does not sleep. It is easier, of course, to engage in the work.

After all, it is truer than ever their deadline looms, the shadow of a ticking clock. And there is so much to discover—letters, to her handful of contacts among Celene’s staff to ascertain just how that order found the crown’s seal. She does not write to Celene—she must defer to the Inquisitor on that point before speaking on behalf of them all. Her people in the Chantry number far fewer, but she knows at least one very sympathetic mother who might shine a light onto the insanity of such an action.

What she can gather is this: the clerics of the Chantry, attempting to seize power and rebuild influence after the loss of both the mages and the templars, seek to make an example of Thedas’ enemies. The political power would be immense. And to show up the Inquisition, to chide them successfully without the threat of war—what a victory for their hapless hands.

Josephine will never let it happen.

Calla brings her tea, bread, green apples. They all go untouched.

She will fast the feelings out of her, if she must. Anything that gives enough pause to let her seriously reconsider the afternoon must be avoided. Even as the night grows very dark, and all Skyhold sleeps, she keeps her candles lit, match after match.

Even after the last runner goes out, the parchments pile. Letters to Rivain, to Antiva, to the Anderfels. She considers writing Weisshaupt before realizing even that is to useless an exercise to engage now. But she does make a note to press Varric to write to Hawke, to see what can be done.

But that will mean speaking to Varric, who will inevitably draw out a thousand details from her about the afternoon—and the past few days—that she has no intention of revealing. Andraste only knows what he’s ferreted out from the runners, the servants, the archers on the wall.

She drops her quill pen to the desk, rubs her eyes, and smears ink across her cheek. Drawing open a drawer of her desk, she finds her handkerchief, and her unsent letter to Laurien, lingering there. Not yet burned.

Josephine snatches the handkerchief and dabs at her face. But the letters stares back at her. A constant reminder. _What will you tell him?_ it seems to ask. _That despite the incredible divide lying between your ideologies and methodologies, somehow you create a strange and resounding success?_

Barely a success, Josephine corrects, biting her tongue. The ink stains the lace handkerchief. _Lies_ , says the letter.

She is mad. That is the only answer. Mad, to continue to resist it. Mad, to believe it can happen. They are so different. _We are better together._ He said it with such faith.

Josephine buries the evening under a new draft of the treaty between Nevarra and Tevinter, her hands sore by the time the sun rises. The ringing of striking sword begins its cacophony in the courtyard, and there is a knock at the door.

Calla, perhaps. Josephine looks at the tray of untouched food, wonders if she should hide the apples away to avoid the disapproving cluck of her tongue.

But Dorian enters instead, poking his head inside the office.

“Your Briony has given me permission to enter,” he says. “May I?”

“Of course.” She blinks at him blearily. “I did not expect you this morning.”

“You actually expected me yesterday.” He shuts the door behind him with his foot, holding two cups. “But the attempted invasion by passionate Chantry knights made that an impossibility.”

Oh. She’d forgotten until this very moment. She opens her mouth, but he sets the mug firmly in front of her. “No apologies,” he says. “It seemed very important.”

The roasting bitterness of coffee wafts up from the mug. “Don’t raise your hopes up,” Dorian warns, making himself comfortable in his chair. He’s wrapped up snugly in his cloak of brown velvet, even inside. “It’s from the cook, so it’s no better than mud. But.”

“Indeed,” she agrees, and takes a sip. Sweetened, too, with a little sugar. The cook has no cream this time of year. A pestilence. Perhaps Josephine will pull a string or two.

“Calla mentioned my exquisite home country soundly rejected your offer.” He looks at her over the rim of the cup. “For mindless repetition’s sake—how I wish she hadn’t executed Alexius.”

She nods, setting her cup down upon her desk. “You know I agree,” she says, because it’s true. “I realize you were there, and I was no witness. I tried to convince her. But her anger was untenable. She did not listen.” And then Alexius’ head rolled across the stone. A waste, a waste, a waste.

Dorian sighs. She knows it is not the only reason he wishes the magister still lived. “You will have to repay his loss to Tevinter.” He takes a drink, makes a face. “All our strange ties to Nevarra aside, they will hold that grudge till you remedy it.”

She inclines her head, and he bursts out laughing. “Don’t ask _me_ what that entails,” he says. “I’ve no idea. The Archon is a wet piece of parchment, the Black Divine both fickle and full of steel.”

She only has to raise his eyebrow before he sighs. “Very well,” he says. “I will write and see what I can find. I can’t guarantee anything.”

Josephine taps her mug. “I can guarantee better than this,” she promises. It is the promise of a _thank you_ —Dorian would do it anyway. They share a heady and unfortunate sense of nationalism.

He snorts. “Excuse my language, lady ambassador, but I could walk to Haven and boil a pot of Ferelden mud, and still find it better quality than the sludge we now enjoy.”

He raises his mug in a jester’s toast, the sleeve of his cloak falling down to his elbow. A linen bandage wraps around his arm.

And then it happens—a spark of realization. So small she can’t put a name to it. But it demands following.

“Your arm,” she says. “Are you well?”

Dorian waves his hand. “But a scratch,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Vivienne and Solas are tremendous at this. A little burn from an anger demon. It won’t even scar.”

Josephine is already tugging open another of her desk drawers, and pulling out Trevelyan’s thick report on the Emprise. She flips hurriedly to the back. Dorian watches her suspiciously.

“ _Deaths, Injuries, and Maledictions_ ,” she reads aloud. What follows is a long and precise list of the dead, the injured and the hurt, handwritten by Trevelyan herself. She uses her finger to parse down the list. “Dorian Pavus,” she reads aloud. “A burn to the wrist. Stitches to the leg. Concussion, two days.”

“All true.” Dorian cocks his head at her. He pulls his cloak up over his wrist.

“Solas,” she reads aloud. “Broken arm, healed with magic. Lacerations from left shoulder to left hip.”

“Josephine.” Dorian touches the report. “What are you looking for?”

“Commander Cullen,” she says, with a touch of finality, and watches Dorian’s fingers twitch. “Unconfirmed lyrium-sickness. Sword wounds to the left arm and right leg, stitches needed. Upon leaving – repetitive strain, left shoulder.”

He sits back in his chair, eyes narrowed.

“I admit to knowing nothing about healing,” Josephine begins, eyes still on the report, searching it over and over. The absence is an answer. “But—the commander must have had some sort of terrible wound to the head. I noticed it myself, when I first saw him. You can see the scar in the right light.” She touches the spot above her ear.

Dorian doesn’t say anything. The absence is an answer. Her heart latches onto this with vicious, vicious teeth.

“Dorian,” she asks, a tone of pure curiosity and nothing more, “when was he hurt?”

He touches his lips with his fingers in thought. But he doesn’t say anything. Dorian has never lied to her before—laughed, twisted around answers, deflected and defended. But he has no reason to begin now.

“He wanted to go,” Dorian says, and quickly. “I tried to talk him out of it. I did.”

The answer breaks across her brain like lightning, furious and electric. She goes from void-bent on answers to alive with rage in the span of a breath. It takes four words.

“He said he had experience fighting giants,” Dorian continues quickly, as though if he says it fast enough it will quell whatever’s building within her. “He felt confident. Something about battling the great bronze statues of Kirkwall during the mage uprising. His Knight-Commander brought them to life with red lyrium. I thought it was legend—but—” He sees the look on her face.

“This is not helping,” he mutters hastily.

“You will excuse me if I end our appointment a little early?” Her voice is so calm. Her fingers, braced against the desk as she rises.

Dorian rises with her. “Josephine,” he says, cautiously, as though she holds a sword in her hand. “I—“

She holds up a hand in pause. “You told me nothing I would not figure out myself,” she reassures him. “However, I appreciate your assistance. Please let me know what your responses are from Tevinter.”

And with that, she closes the report and strides out into the hall.

Dorian follows her closely, says her name more than once. Varric bids her a good morning when she passes his usual spot. She nods to him without pause.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Dorian flock to Varric, sweeping his velvet cloak about himself. “You will need to find the Iron Bull,” she hears him mutter. The statement makes little sense. Are they worried for Cullen’s health? Do they imagine anyone could stand between her and her quarry?

The winter sun hides behind a thick blanket of snow-cloud in the courtyard. The wind blows steadily, but Josephine does not feel the slightest brush of cold. She spies fur mantle and a golden head, the shine of steel armor amidst whirling swords and shields.

Josephine does not think for a moment about the recruits surrounding him, about the weapons they wield. One of them yells _commander_ as she ducks around a sparring pair, launching herself into the fray.

“Hold,” she hears him snap, “ _hold!_ ” It cracks like a whip above their heads, and suddenly she is in the center, the eye of the clattering storm.

“What is wrong with you?” he demands, whirling on her. “You can’t just waltz through them like that—what if they—“

“I do not care,” she interrupts.

His eyes flash. “Josephine—“

“I know of your travels.” She watches the words hit. All the phases of realization flit across his face, all the horror of surprise.

So. He has been expecting this.

He runs a hand over his face, motions Manon over. “Resume the drill,” he mutters. Josephine marches out of the circle, knowing he will follow.

They are not six paces from the recruits when he says, “I meant to tell you.”

“We have had this conversation,” Josephine replies, “and you know my feelings. What you meant to do is nothing to me.”

He does not answer. All it does is stoke the flame. “I asked for a competent soldier,” she continues. Her hands are shaking, she notices. She turns, taking the stone stairs up to the battlements. “That’s all I asked for. Not—not this.”

She hears him inhale, as though he means to speak, and hurtles on. “Does the Inquisitor know? Does Leliana?” She gestures out to the whole of Skyhold. “Do they all know, but me? Ah, yes, Josephine the ambassador, diplomat for the Inquisition, completely ignorant of her own business.”

Josephine arrives at the top of the stairs very quickly, and goes forward to find his office door. “I never thought you capable of such deception. Lies and idiocy, yes, but this. _Why?_ ” It is locked. She rattles at the latch. “The stupidity, the utter foolishness— _why?_ ” She presses her face into her hands.

Cullen says, far behind her, “Because it was for you.”

If she gasps, only she knows it. Everything stops. She whirls around, and he stands two steps before the threshold of the stairs.

“What are you doing?” Josephine demands.

He folds his arms. “Standing here.”

She blusters, quickly closing the distance between them, and he holds up a hand. “If we go into that office,” he says lowly, “we will rip each other to pieces. We will never mend. I won’t do it.”

Josephine feet stop at the top of the stairs. She looks down at him. He meets her gaze evenly. “I won’t,” he mutters.

“Do you think a change in scenery will affect that outcome?” They are blocked, she thinks by the high tree line of the courtyard. Private enough to tear everything apart.

He blinks, but does not speak to defend himself. “By the state of you, you nearly died,” she snaps, gesturing to him. “You were hurt. Hurt badly. And for what? Someone else could have done it, could have gone—if I wanted you, I would have asked.”

She takes a breath. “You had no right. I wanted no Inquisition involvement, none of this getting anymore damnably entwined than it already is.” She grips her trembling hands into fists. Her nails bite into her skin. “Cullen, I could kill you myself.”

He casts his eyes down—just for a moment, but then he meets her just as squarely. She cannot believe the cheek.

“Will you say nothing?” she demands. “Will you let me rage until I find myself empty? What folly.”

“It was the easiest choice I have ever made,” he says, and the world jars to a halt again.

“Not for the Inquisition.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “And not because you demanded it. Why make Manon go? I could do it.” He exhales slowly. “I’d sail to Par Vollen or walk the Hissing Wastes. It didn’t matter. It was, as you said, simple.”

Cullen looks at her then, a look that pins her where she stands. “We delivered the documents to Val Royeaux. That’s all.”

“You should have told me,” she snaps, grappling for anything to bolster her against his words.

“I lose my words around you.” He bites his lip. “I couldn’t stand you thinking I did it—as a move in our game. As a way to gain favor. Better let it go unsaid than misunderstood.”

Josephine narrows her eyes, but he holds up a hand. “Please,” he whispers. “I—Josephine, you must know. How could you not? I’m not clever enough to be obtuse.”

“Know what?” she asks, and her own voice is quiet, the rage simmering under it.

“What you mean to me,” he says, letting his arms drop to his sides. But he never pulls away from her gaze. “How I care for you. There are no other words for it.”

It is snowing, Josephine realizes. Little flakes of snow gather on his mantle.

“The things I would do for you,” he murmurs.

“Cullen,” she says.

“You would never ask me for any of them.” His eyes widen, as though by saying the words he realizes them for what they are, makes them real. “Impossible. But here we are.”

“You cannot be certain.” The words slip out of her unbidden. She promised them, she remembers, but a promise is only that.

His laugh, raspy and bare, pulls tight at her heart despite herself. “I made a mistake,” he says. “But I don’t care.”

Josephine stares at him.

“You live, breathe, and fight with me.” He dares, _dares_ to attempt a smile, his lip curving crookedly up. It wavers and fades under her hard glare. “Shout all you like. It’s all I need to know.” And he ducks his head.

She tries to say his name, but can’t, even as her heart beats mercilessly against her breast. It takes a long moment, now, before he speaks again.

“I say it all, and ‘the world still stands.’” He quotes her ruefully. Josephine cannot breathe.

“But without you, it lacks a sun.” His shoulders sink, just so. He thinks this is the end, she realizes. This is the last time they will speak. “Without you, I am only a fool standing in the snow.”

He exhales. Snowflakes catch in his lashes. The moment stretches between them, vast and inescapable. Warring voices rise within her—to go, to leave this here, to back away from the knife’s edge. This is the time, the place. To do something, anything. To wait.

“You are still angry with me,” Cullen mutters, and he breaks their gaze, casting his eyes to the ground.

“ _Furious_ ,” breathes Josephine, and it is nothing, nothing at all, to tip up his chin and kiss him.

She presses her lips against his, a delicate brush against roughness made by wind and cold. He tenses beneath her, a halt that sends Josephine praying _please, oh_ before he unwinds, going replete under her hands. It is a quick kiss, but a kiss where she pulls away to examine him for hesitance and not even a breath passes before he rises up to catch her.

She parts them, cupping his jaw, admiring the strong lines with her fingers. If he trembles, she will keep his secret. He looks up at her like a warm morning, too full of joy to even chance a smile.

Their foreheads touch, and Josephine closes her eyes. His gloved hand comes to rest on her hip, lining the curve, keeping her there.

“Do not think this means forgiveness,” she mutters, and the rusty huff of his laugh makes her cheeks hurt.

“Never,” he vows, voice hoarse. Her heart both aches and sings to hear it.

A shout goes up in the courtyard, the blare of a horn and a runner’s call: _Inquisitor at the gate!_ It echoes across the mountain.

Josephine touches her thumb to his lips. “Just once more,” she whispers, “if you will bear it.”

An unmistakable smirk forms on his face; he lifts his head. The urge to kiss him till it disappears makes quick work of her.

“Again and again, Josephine,” he murmurs. She captures her name between their mouths, as though it is a breath of prayer, or a golden note of promise. As though she has the power to hold it at all: hope’s smallest, most perfect sound.

 


	15. build

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A moment of bliss, and Cullen and Josephine discover the real work has only just begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million years later (and after enough Major Real Life Events to last me for ten years, much less eight months), here we are. I can't thank you enough for your patience. Thanks to sunspeared for her keen eye and general mercilessness. 
> 
> Also, here's some lovely art for this story, [ made by kauriart](https://kauriart.tumblr.com/post/149310717230/love-song-for-the-admiral-by-klickitats-is-hands%E2%80%9D)!

“Well,” says Trevelyan, plucking a muddy leaf from her own hair, “you’ve been busy.”

Cullen stands in his usual place at the war table. Their Inquisitor drums her fingers on the map. Leliana’s eyes bore into the side of his head. If he so much as looks at Josephine, he’s certain he’ll burst into flames—the world’s weariest, most blissful cliché.

“The clerics are nothing to fear, Inquisitor.” Leliana must have decided enough was enough. “Upstarts, and nothing more. The commander and the ambassador managed to commit quite the diversion. In front of the entire Inquisition, no less.”

The double-entendre lands with all the skill of a successful parry. A small sound in his periphery—Josephine, clearing her throat. It takes his entire will not go to red as a maidenly beet.

“Quite.” If Trevelyan can sense the jest, she does not acknowledge it. Either overtired from the road or the nonsense, she merely dusts more dirt from her jacket. “I regret it happened while I was away.”

“Nonsense,” Josephine rebukes, recovered. “We were more than ready. They were led by a templar 

named Caradoc.” She glances over her shoulder at him, and there’s a pause before he realizes it’s his cue to speak. 

“The name’s not familiar,” says Trevelyan, tapping her chin. 

“I thought he might be from Ostwick,” Cullen explains, “but he came from Starkhaven’s circle. Only a junior knight at that.”

Trevelyan’s nostrils flare. “A junior knight walks with the full fist of the Chantry?”

“Not the Chantry,” Leliana corrects. “Upstart clerics.”

“Tell me the difference.” Her eyes glint. “When they feel they can descend on us without warning, when they feel confident enough to fake Celene’s approval—no matter how stupidly.”

Josephine says, “Desperation,” with a shrug of her shoulders. “A last grasp for power.”

“When armed soldiers walk up to our gates,” Trevelyan replies, voice cold, “it means they think we’re a hill they can march over, or there are enough behind them somewhere to level us flat.” She looks at Cullen with a hard glance.

He mulls it over. “The Inquisitor has a point,” he mutters. Now Josephine regards him with a cock of her head. “We dispatched them well, I won’t deny it. But they were—confident. Brash.”

“So,” Trevelyan says archly, with the warm brusque of someone who others agree with, “tell me again—what is the difference?” 

A short pause before Leliana glances back down to the map.

“Precisely. None at all,” Trevelyan decides. Were Val Royeaux closer to her fingers, Cullen suspects she’d burn a hole in the shape of the Sunburst Throne through the map. She exhales through her teeth. She says, “We need a Divine.”

“Indeed. From which vault shall I retrieve one?” asks Josephine, just dryly enough that it makes Trevelyan huff a laugh, press the heels of her hands into her eyes.

Trevelyan’s tiredness isn’t from the road, or battle. He’s certain of that now. She carries a weariness as mantle. He can see it, plain as steel weights strapped to her shoulders. There’s nothing in the reports from the Emprise to explain it. The answer was victory, as it always is with her—charging through walls of ice, and blood, and red lyrium. Nothing else would suffice.

“One with a leash,” Trevelyan says, finally. “To bring them to heel.”

“To _unite_ them,” is Josephine’s reply.

“Cassandra is busy breaking demons in the Emprise.” Her fingers drum upon on the table. “I need Vivienne. I can spare no one. Indeed, if there is a vault—“

“Well.” Josephine taps her tablet with the nib of her pen. “There are other candidates.” 

A long pause. “You tempt me, Ambassador.”

Leliana says, in a perfectly even voice, “Perhaps we might table this discussion for another time.”

“In a perfect world,” Josephine continues, “who would you desire?”

This makes Trevelyan pause. “I’m not sure I know the person,” she admits.

“Nor I. I’m hardly devout.” Josephine turns to the three of them standing around the table. “But the three of you know the Chantry well. What do you want?”

She words it so simply. The quiet stretches as Leliana and Trevelyan either ponder or hesitate to be the first to speak.

“She must love Andraste,” says Trevelyan, deadpan, and Josephine nearly smiles. 

“Strength of will.” Cullen hears his own voice break the silence. “I mean—no.” Instinct, to demand that of a leader. A hard-edged righteousness to guide her despite sense and morality. But Meredith has left a shadow on him not unlike a scar. “Not strength.”

“Then what?” Josephine asks, and their eyes meet.

He has to steady himself with a breath before he continues, and busy his eyes with the Imperial Highway on the map, before he answers, “Equilibrium.” He rubs the back of his neck with a thumb. “A sense of when to act, when to wait, when to listen. The great Divines were not pulled one way or the other.” He clears his throat. “They knew—there’s a harmony to be found, in tension.”

Cullen feels her gaze on him grow warm, perhaps despite itself, and Leliana says, flat as a board, 

“Freedom and the good of Thedas, Ambassador, no matter what it takes. An actual understanding of what affects our world.”

“Very well.” Josephine scratches a few words on her tablet. “And you, Inquisitor?”

Trevelyan furrows her brow and says nothing. Her lips curl, as though there’s a bitter memory in her mouth. “Understanding,” she echoes, eyes on the map. “Yes. Find me some candidates, Ambassador, and we will discuss.”

Cullen blinks—it’s abrupt, even for her. She waves her hand, pushes on. “But before I add that task to your plate: your plan, for moving the Wardens?”

“In progress.” Josephine stands at attention. “Your will?”

“Out of Skyhold and out of my hair.” Trevelyan’s voice is flat and dry as the plains. “I don’t care where they go.” She rubs the bridge of her nose and mutters, “Mistakes of mercy.”

The words change the air in the room, their own cold wind. He hears Josephine shift from foot to foot beside him. Perhaps she can sense what has changed in Trevelyan; Maker knows he can’t. Whatever it is gnaws at her like a beast; she holds the side of the table like it’s the only thing holding her up.

“Inquisitor?” she inquires, a softer edge to her voice.

Trevelyan raises her head in acknowledgment.

“It’s not yet a mistake.” Josephine’s voice. He turns his head a little to regard her now. She watches the crown of Trevelyan’s head, her eyes stern with determination despite her gentle turn of phrase.

“Then define it.” Trevelyan’s eyes wander over the map between them.

The corner of her lip quirks up; a smile small and precise enough to sharpen a blade on. He imagines pressing his lips there. A rush of memory floods from scalp to fingertips, and he closes his eyes. He’s distinctly aware of Leliana’s eyes beating a tattoo into the back of his head, but all his survival instincts dissolved beneath the snow piling outside. (Outside, where she kissed him on the stairs.)

“Opportunity,” Josephine says, confident as a golden crown. “We only need to let it in. Or let it go, in our case.”

Trevelyan snorts, the sound ungainly yet appropriate.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she tells them warily. “Less talk, I think, and more movement.”

“Do we not always deliver?” Josephine asks, the corners of her eyes crinkling.

The attempt at humor slides to the floor. Trevelyan brushes dust from her sleeve. “Eventually,” she says, “but often late.” She frowns, then, and digs inside her pocket before producing a ragged envelope. Crisp parchment spattered by dirt. She leans halfway across the war table, and drops it in front of Josephine. “Speaking of which.” 

Josephine arches her eyebrow at the delivery before setting down her tablet, and gently retrieving the envelope with the tips of her fingers. Trevelyan just nods, and Josephine breaks the seal. She reads the contents within. 

Cullen cannot read her eyes—Josephine remains the expert in saving face. She swallows, once, and he follows the breath as it travels down her throat. “The DuParaquettes,” she says finally, “have ordered the House of Repose to destroy the contract on my life.” She folds it once, twice. “It is done.” 

Silence, then. Cullen nearly chokes, taken aback by how full of relief the moment is. Relief is quickly replaced by suspicion at its simplicity. 

“Is there something wrong?” Josephine inquires, a little sigh righting her shoulders. 

“That can’t possibly be all,” he says, finally, brow furrowed with uncertainty. 

“As quick as life and death can be,” says Leliana, neatly plucking the contract out of Josephine’s hands to examine it herself. Josephine takes up her tablet again. He expected—more relief. He is dazed by it. But Josephine had been unfazed by the entire affair since learning of the contract on her life, the long-standing implications to the well-being of her family aside. And the murder of her couriers, that black poniard slicing its way out of the parchment. The late night in the bitter cold of Skyhold’s courtyard, following the assassination. 

And, well. He can hardly forget her rage this morning, discovering his own role in the plot to save her life.

Josephine tilts her head in reminder. “They are a business, Commander.” She glances at the contract in Leliana’s hands. “I will bring them no profit after all, so we have efficacy instead of dramatics.” 

“Will this be the last of it, Josephine?” Trevelyan leans forward on her hands, a pointed tone to her voice. 

“As far as I know,” Josephine says with a shrug. “I cannot thank you enough.” 

Trevelyan waves it away with a brush of her hand. And then it is over. All of it—the letters, the machinations, his journey through the Emerald Graves and the Inquisitor’s to Val Royeaux—is done. He thinks of how many other Inquisition missions, tugging at people’s lives, have closed so quietly. But few of them held that kind of pain at the center. 

He clears his throat. Musters his most matter-of-fact tone. “Very well. You are safe.” 

She gives a little nod. “As safe as one can be,” she allows, and it is a little glimmer of sunshine in the room. 

Leliana drags Josephine from the room once the meeting adjourns, leaving Cullen scrawling his final notes on a scrap of parchment and Trevelyan, wrapped again in her traveling cloak, glaring at the map. He wants nothing more than to drop what he’s doing and haul after, but Trevelyan asks him to stay, to go through their troop movements in the desert. She begins examining pieces dotted along the Western Approach. 

“How was the road?” he asks.

She doesn’t hear him, already preoccupied. Instead, she says, “Brief me, please, on Rylen’s last report.” 

~~~

Josephine disappears for the rest of the afternoon, either on mission from Leliana or with her own business, and business. Cullen runs drills in the courtyard with Manon—two-hander defense, a task so unwieldy it requires two of them to supervise everyone adequately. At the very end of the drill, one soldier nicks another, and Cullen ends up dragging the hysterical soldier to the surgery himself. It’s not how he planned to spend the hours till sunset.

Of course, Varric waits for him when he emerges from the tent, his smug smile glowing like a beacon.

“Please don’t do this,” Cullen says and casts a look down at himself. Dried blood flecks his armor. 

“I’m a rich man, Curly.” Varric pats his pocket. “But today, you’ve made me rich in the only way that matters.”

“In drink?” asks Cullen.

“Victory,” Varric practically sings. “But the night is young.”

“I don’t—” Cullen begins, but finds himself at the door of the Herald’s Rest anyway. It’s full tonight, but 

early enough for the drunks to keep their wits about them. No one throws up a cheer, or elbows him in the side, because Cullen’s still wearing his sword. But by the time they’re seated at a table, Maryden hums a Fereldan love song, plucking at her lute. Every woman in the bar gives Cullen a onceover from boot sole to mantle with a raised eyebrow— _this the one? He’s covered in shit._ A clear evaluation. 

Someone on the second floor goes, _heard they tongued each other for all the Inquisition to see on the stairwell, right in the middle of screaming bloody murder._ He hears the cuff to the ear that follows, and the muttered _shut your fucking mouth, it was the nicest thing I’ve seen in weeks._

Varric presses a mug of ale into his hands. “Drink,” he bids. “And smile. Andraste’s ass, man. It’s been a good day for you.”

Cullen does as he’s told, at least with the ale. The grassy bitterness coats his tongue. It reminds him—Josephine, faint echo of bitterness on her lips from coffee in the morning, the sweetness of stirred sugar. The touch of her fingertips, trailing along his jaw, tilting up his face. She had been gentle. Even the press of her lips did not insist.

The moment it happened, Cullen froze. In that moment, every cruelty he’d cast her way rose on his skin like scar tissue—every hard word exchanged between them, every blind moment, every knee-breaking failure. It could not be real. Once, it had been too much of an effort for the two of them to even stand in 

the same room without spitting.

But her kiss. Patient, flickering with heat, bidding him remember. Her fingers, lingering in his hair, on the mark above his ear. Her promises, sealed by her lips upon the back of his hand.

He gave himself over, helpless. She had pulled away once, hesitation etched in the warm, brown skin of her face. She searched his eyes. As though he had the power to turn away from the sun. He chased her touch, heart clattering in his chest. 

It astounds him still, staring into the amber well of his mug. To know think someone looks at him—covered in steel plate, scratched up with scars, a longsword that never leaves his side, even in sleep—and thinks, _this man, I will treat him tenderly. I will touch him slow. With care._

When he looks up, Varric’s grinning again.

“That good, huh?” he asks.

Cullen says, “It’s been a long day. Where’s Dorian?”

“Licking his wounds.” Varric cracks his knuckles. “I don’t know. Off with Tiny. He only won a handful of silver.”

Despite his better sense, Cullen asks, “On what?”

“Dorian bets the down odds,” he says. “Against hope, for the most part. He was right—it happened on the heels of you doing something stupid.” He takes a long pull of his ale. “But we all bet that, so it was an even cut.”

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Cullen replies. Varric raises an eyebrow. “I earned the mistake. Where’s my silver?”

“He won on location.” Varric ignores him, except for a roll of his eyes. “He and Bull split that one. I thought you and Josephine would wrestle each other into a closet, but I forgot how when you’re sorry—you want _everyone_ to know.” Varric stretches out _everyone_ with a warm laziness, his eyebrows raised to his hairline. “And that you’re Fereldan and think _a few trees here and there_ constitutes modesty and privacy.”

“It wasn’t as though it happened in the middle of the courtyard,” he protests, taking a drink.

Varric thumbs a chip in the mug’s handle. “You’re right, but your captain forgot to keep running the drill after we got there. And by then, you know. There was an audience.”

“Oh,” says Cullen.

“Yeah.” He takes a pull. “A very quiet audience. Sparkler said he’d hex anyone who made noise. I don’t think we’ve been so collectively quiet since we were waiting to see if Trevelyan closed the breach at Haven.” Varric furrows his brow. “But. Yeah. A handful of leaves, a couple of branches, and you, being stupid.” 

Cullen wonders if they heard him refuse to unlock his office and follow her inside. “It wasn’t stupid. Going to the Graves.” 

Varric waves his hand. “It’s not that you _went_ that was stupid,” he explains. “You lied to a diplomatic professional and thought, _Shit, she’ll never find out._ ”

He shrugs. “Not the point,” he says. “It was done. What else matters?”

Varric regards him strangely—the look of a person confirming a hypothesis, or hatching a new one. He doesn’t like it at all, and takes a drink instead.

“Why did you win?” Cullen asks.

“Hmm?”

“You.” He nods at Varric’s coin purse. “You said you won the day. Fat with drink and sovereigns. Swollen with victory.”

He leers in response. “First bet, oldest bet, most important.” He thumbs at the side of his nose. “Who makes the first move?”

“You bet against me.”

“Sure did.” Varric pushes his mug to the side of the table when a serving lad comes by. “Bull was adamant it’d be you—you already played your hand on the battlements with the Inquisitor. You’re predictable. All instinct. The snatch-and-tongue.”

Cullen’s face turns sour, and Varric dissolves low hysterics. When the serving lad brings back his mug, he takes a drink, and says, “She lets you be your true self, that one.” When Cullen tilts his head, Varric pats him on the arm. “You know. All the wilting, the mooning.”

If he hadn’t said it with such hidden affection, Cullen would be standing up to make his way out. “That’s enough.”

Varric pushes his ale cup closer her to his hands, and he takes the hint, drinks while Varric examines him with a wary eye. “Now, Curly,” he decides, finally, voice a little gruff, “can’t see how that’s not a good thing.”

He doesn’t let the full weight of history line his words, maybe out of mercy. Either way, Cullen is grateful. When they speak together, Kirkwall finds a way to hang over them, an illness that never quite cures. 

And it marks the second time today his thoughts have turned to Meredith. How he once demanded an emptiness of himself, a coldness to rule his hands and deeds. Strength meant a scouring of the soul. It meant finding succor in the ache of emptiness. Nothing but that.

He finds comfort in that stillness, even now, even when he knows better. To be free of human constraints feels like mastery. It _is_ mastery.

“Perhaps,” he manages.

“Not complaining either way. Smart of you.” Varric has a barmaid refill his cup, and Cullen’s, even though it’s only half-done. “I banked on that. That you’d be sorry as the Void, but you’d learn enough to wait.”

“No other way,” Cullen answers, before he can find a handle on his own mouth. It was what they made. 

Nothing else for him to do but lay between them what he knew, what he could do, and for her to decide if it was—not if it was good enough, not _satisfactory._ But if it was time.

Trust, at its most simple. For her, he had already sworn to wait. It would be her who decided which way they could point. He had told her as much, he figured, in his fever-hazed letter.

“Huh,” Varric says, unsatisfied. “Interesting.”

Cullen glowers over his mug. “I’m not going to give you a soliloquy.” He picks at a chip in the counter with his finger. The wary way Varric eyes him only confirms Cullen’s fear that this is not the end of the gambling by far, and somehow by not playing along he’s made the pot all the sweeter for someone.

Varric swirls his ale, casts a look across the table like a man eyeing a target for his dart. Before Cullen can go on, Varric lets loose a strike incisive enough to split his world in two. “So,” he says, tipping the cup back for a drink, “what now?” 

Only two words, smaller than pebbles, but they rattle inside his brain like the worst of the lyrium headaches. The ones that wake him early, pounding like a bit of his skull’s fallen off. The memory they call up is clear as water, or the amber ale filling his cup. 

The last time this happened, he’d been alone. No Varric elbowing him in the ribs with a wide-toothed grin, no sitting among the audience who watched it happen. After kissing Trevelyan on the ramparts, for all the blighted world to see, he’d gone back to his desk and stared at the same missive for two hours, totally bewildered at his own boldness. 

They came together naturally; he could see that now. She’d stumbled under the mantle of Andraste’s Herald by chance, but was led forward entirely by faith. He could count on one hand the mages he knew who might have been Chantry sisters in another life, and she was one of them. She prayed on difficult decisions. She talked at length with Cassandra and Leliana about Justinia’s intentions for the Inquisition, who it served and for what purpose. She recruited forces for Cullen when he remarked on their low numbers, and never shied away from the use of force where it seemed applicable. What the public thought of her didn’t matter. Speaking with them made her nervous, she confessed to him. Their boundless need, her lack of answers. It never stopped her from trying. If she was the only sword of their god, she would serve, even if her hands shook.

That had been the surface, what made Cullen sit up with rapt attention. The truth was she had found him comforting and for some reason, safe. Trevelyan became a permanent fixture at his side out in the yard whenever she could sneak a moment away. She found him first when she returned from her adventures, always. A confidante of sorts, for her wonder at the Avvar, her despair at how the Hinterlands were shorn to pieces. _They’ve even scarred the land_ , she told him, watching soldiers fumble with pikes. _You can see where where mage and templar stood, and where they died._ She bit her lip. _I don’t know if being cut down by our swords is any better than being cut down by each other. But at least it ends._

She told him of growing up in the Circle, of her fears pushing forward with the Inquisition. She told him of Ser Arram, her never-ending dreams of his face. Cullen never told her anything. She had asked, once, but he’d shaken his head and that had been the end of it. She never pressed, perhaps assuming he would speak about the past when he was ready. Instead, it was merely a way out. Cullen never did. 

He can admit now he never would have. Not without the push. The thought of living without insistence—honed as a scalpel and unyielding to his demands to leave well enough alone—echoes through him, hollow and incomplete. 

He had been content to be her pillar until nearly losing her in the destruction at Haven—they had barely been at Skyhold a week before he found himself kissing her on the battlements, the only way he could think of to ensure she remained by his side, or at least returned there.

After kissing her, there had been little conversation—she came to him when he was needed, and he was content to wait. They did not speak of the future. At the end of the world, the present was their only concern. Things proceeded much as they did before, until they didn’t. 

He can remember just how it felt as she slipped away, inch by inch. Not out of remorse, or regret—Josephine has held all his attention for months and months—but just as a body knew where it had fractured. The calluses worn along the break-points of bones. 

Some part of him had known she would return to Ser Arram once he arrived—nothing to be done about it. Instead of making peace with it, he had catalogued their lives side-by-side. Her knight-lieutenant had little faith or patience for righteousness, a Templar through and through even though the order no longer existed, who had known her since they were both adolescents, gangly-limbed and staring at each other with blemished faces. Cullen had known Trevelyan found him a comfort because he reminded her of the past, but he could not account for how different from the past he truly was. He could not stand up against an immeasurable man. 

When she vanished, she did not leave a space. They hadn’t built enough between them to leave one. Only a shadow. The sound of her breath in his ear when she sighed. The weight of her in his lap, the wind howling on the ramparts. There and then gone, suddenly, all at once. 

More than a year later, here he sat, and Varric asked, _what now?_ Until this moment, it hadn’t existed. He had no intention of wasting his own time, in wallowing in his own emotion more than absolutely necessary. It had taken him weeks, and being brought to his knees by the lyrium in the Emprise, to even begin to put together words of how he felt, or why. And he had been content with it. At least they were speaking. They could look to each other across the war table and know together they could think of solutions worthy of the Inquisition. Cullen had spent his heart on worse. Much worse. 

That was the nonsense of Cullen’s longing. _Longing_ implied desire to see a journey through to a conclusion. Cullen had gone on without it—it had no point. Trevelyan had been the first in a very long while. But now there was Josephine. Josephine, who already knew far, far too much, and who had shown him just how much there was to _want._

Varric snaps his fingers in front of his face once, twice, three times. Cullen blinks. 

“Thank Andraste,” he says. “I thought I broke you.”

Cullen clears his throat. “I was only thinking.” 

“Curly,” he begins, a little too quiet to be comfortable, a little too gentle for Cullen to sit still with the words, “you can’t tell me you never thought about it.” 

Cullen quickly lifts his ale to his lips. “Of course I have,” he says. 

And now Varric cannot hide his surprise, bushy eyebrows raised high enough to graze his hairline. But he doesn’t press any further. A small mercy. 

When he walks across the battlements to his bed, there’s no light in Josephine’s window. He hopes she sleeps. He can place his thumb on the odd feeling he carried all through the day, now—strange, to have the morning and then not see her for all the hours after. At least, in the Inquisition, days never linger long.

He climbs up the ladder, pulls his armor off piece by piece, cleans his face, and leans against the washstand.

The prayer rests on his tongue, to bow to the Maker for the gift. It is hard to thank him. Gratitude for what is good so often results in it being pulled away, the hard justice of divine providence. The balance rests uneasy. He turns from the basin and sits on the edge of the bed, stretching the knot in his thigh.

The ritual words of his usual prayer tumbles out of him with ease. _Let my arm not falter. Let my shield never break. Help me to be worthy._

He cannot say more, if only because he does not know what to say, and there is no relief. The day unravels before him, the glory of the morning and all the hours between. And then, because he is alone, it sours. _What now?_ It embeds itself in his chest, all the knots stringing together on Varric’s words. It is the only kind of magic Cullen has, the power to poison a blessing with his own thoughts.

There was so much—an endless tangle of thread, strung in knots too tight and small for his clumsy fingers. His head spins, then fills with the hungry noise of his own thought. Admittedly, the conversation after she had kissed him was brief as brief could be. Then there was the bluster of the war table, the surprise of Trevelyan’s success at Val Royeaux, and the rest of the day. And now he lies here. Here, with this weight on his chest, heavy as a fist, a knot made of Josephine and his own wool-gathering. 

_What now?_ An endless list of what Cullen needs, if he is brave enough to ask. Josephine, through sheer strength of will and perseverance explored deeper than most, and still she has only run her fingertips across the surface of a past as wide and full Lake Calenhad. He is not complicated, only that the past is heavy enough to bear down on him like the teeth of a vice, a trap she does not deserve. She has proven herself a hundred times, but each inch she uncovers seems so close to the last one she will bear willingly. 

The scar on the side of his head marks the spot, a pin driven into a map, of where and why he is hers. But that is not enough. He can’t let it lie, all unsaid until it fades away into nothing. They must—do something. Talk, even though the thought of it makes him wither. 

He is a novice. The truth, at the end of the night. And there is no holy tome to page through, or Maker who will find his worry a worthy cause. 

His nerves twitch, and he lays down upon his bed, the cold stars winking down at him from the roof. All he’d assumed he could live with, and without. He presses the flat of his hands against his eyes, covering his face. 

He thinks of Josephine, again, but just as she is. Asleep, eyes closed, instead of writing by candlelight till morning, pile of letters waiting to fly. Thinks of the missive, crumpled from Trevelyan’s pocket. It distresses him, how simple it was. How the day churned on without acknowledging the gratitude of it. One struggle ends, and he is sure another will rise to take its place. 

But he must end his prayer. Lying still, he speaks the words. 

“You are safe,” he murmurs aloud, to no one in the empty room. Not _make me to rest in the warmest places._ Not _take me from a life of sorrow._ Not _tell me I have sung to your approval._

Only this. A few words, true as a lit candle, against the darkness of night. 

~~~

Cullen dreams of the usual claws, tipped with glass and dancing over the skin of his back. They drag down his shoulders, the muscles of his arms, the fragile skin inside his wrist, and then they dive in. He searches, far and wide, for iron and armor. Finds piles of it: mountains of steel, chestplates with bones still hanging from their sides and serrated with blade marks, pauldrons rusted with blood. Boots, filled with feet. He grits his teeth, tries to slide his hand into a bracer and it turns to sand. The sensation grows more frantic, a razor-sharp tingling that burrows through, seeking his marrow like a maggot might. His fingers burn with it.

He wakes more than once in the night to fumble over to his washstand and crack the thin crust of ice growing over the top. The cold water soothes his hands enough for him to fall back into bed, and then the cycle repeats. He doesn’t gather enough sleep to fuel a grown man for two hours, much less a day, but he wakes at sunrise. He finds his routine on the floor of his room, enough exercise on his hands and knees to break a fine sweat along his hairline, and then he can begin the day.

The dim light of the morning casts a shine on his armor, a blink before the fade into nothing. For a moment, his fingers resting on the steel, he expects it to melt. But it doesn’t. He reminds himself of this with every piece he latches onto his body. It is armor, and it cannot turn to sand. Not unless Dagna’s had an hour with it.

His stomach turns with the thought of food or drink, and a dull pounding begins at the back of his head. His hands aren’t steady yet. The day will tell whether they grow still or grow worse

Cullen climbs down, turns to regard his office, where a missive on his desk informs him he is somehow already late to the war table, even though it is barely sunrise. 

When he sets off, very step across the bailey seems louder than ever before. He has the distinct feeling of being watched, even though all of Skyhold still sleeps, and the only one to watch him walk are the guards on rota and the stern face of the mountain. Nothing is different. He swallows once, the knot his chest panging. Solid as coal, it weighs steady there, just as it did the night before. It pinches at his nerves, aching his stomach with the thought of the unknown, just as it presses _I will see her face today, and we are not the same any longer_. 

They are just stoking the fires in the great hall, and it is early enough that not even Varric sits at his table to write. When he finds his way to the war room and pulls open the door, Leliana reads from a thick parchment wound in her hands, and Josephine leans over the table, hair hurriedly tied up into a bun. Little tendrils already escape the knot, falling forward as she squints at the position of a pin. Her gold necklace _clinks_ where it rests against the table. She is bundled in soft wool today, grey as a winter cloud. Her usual gold peeks out at her collar, her sleeves. Her nose is wrinkled, a fine line forming between her brows. He wonders if that line existed before the Inquisition, and if he could smooth it away with a touch of his thumb. 

He promptly forgets how to say any greeting in the common tongue as the door closes behind him, and wonders if it will be like this every time. 

“Commander,” says Josephine by way of _good morning_ , “How many troops can you spare for Caer Bronach? The winter floods have caused a mud slide.”

Cullen clears his throat, raises the report in his hand. “I saw,” he says. Someone has been in to stoke the brazier in the corner but only recently, as he can still see the puffs of his breath in the air when he speaks. “Leliana, does Charter—“

“The fortress is overrun with villagers,” she tells him. “Charter cannot possibly sustain them all for the entire winter.” She rubs her temple. “I thought they rebuilt Crestwood above the flood plain.”

“They built it on the only rocks left standing.” Cullen furrows his brow at the map. “I wouldn’t build a village anywhere near there, but—that’s where they’ve settled. Was this not an issue before?”

“The bann insists this is only a poor year for weather,” Josephine says. She pauses, making a note on parchment. 

“’Only a poor year,’” Leliana repeats. “I’d wager it’s happened at least twice since the Blight.” 

“Imagine his relief at having all of Crestwood huddle under the Inquisition’s roof, instead of at his holding,” Cullen says, adjusting one of his pieces.

Josephine nods. “True enough. I’ll press him to act.” She moves one of her pieces as well—their fingers nearly touch as they set their pieces at the same time, and her hand slides away in a graceful flutter. Close and too close. “ _In our debt_ is not a comfortable place to rest his head.” 

“Not at all,” he offers. There is a wrinkle from her bedsheet across her cheek. His better senses careen through the morning mist to snap him out of staring, and he reconsiders the map. “You can tell Charter to expect three squadrons. They’ll rotate out with fresh soldiers every two weeks.” He drums his fingers on the table. “I’ll provide instructions for their use.”

Leliana shakes her head. “Charter is more than capable,” she says. “Let her do what she needs to do.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Cullen says. “But—what are the casualties?”

Josephine eyes him with suspicion over her tablet. “There’s no definitive number yet.” She considers her report. “Only the missing. Thirty, at least.”

“Even with thirty, they’ll be pulling bodies out of the mud for weeks.” He rests his hands on the pommel of his sword. “There’s a specific rotation that must be followed.”

Leliana’s mouth presses into a thin line, and Josephine sets down her pen. What follows is expectant silence. Heat creeps up the back of his neck. “I have done the digging for bodies myself, after disaster,” he says. “For days and days. It’s not like burying the dead; it breaks your mind.” 

It did not break him, but it broke others. The Chantry’s explosion set a dull ringing in Cullen’s ears for hours after—even when the sound left him the numbness did not, and he found the smallest thing he could do was spend hours sifting through the stone. Carefully lifting bodies from the rubble. When he could no longer stand in the Gallows, with the smell of blood, lyrium, and his own failure hanging above the halls like smoke—he would walk to the Chantry, and dig.

It has been years since, but even he knows in lifting each brick he attempted to undo a part of himself. An impossible task. He cannot quite remember what he thought as he did it: was each stone a price for the guilt gnawing at him, did carting away the wreckage erase his presence, as though he was never there, as though he could fade from memory itself?

 _Just shit penance._ It’s Varric’s voice, at the back of his mind, of all people.

Cullen sighs. “If you want the soldiers to lift a sword for the Inquisition after, they’ll need rest. They’ll need to take turns building or hauling or whatever needs done. Charter should do as she likes, but I need the guarantee to send them there in good faith.”

A long silence. “I will press the bann for whoever he can send,” Josephine says, after consideration. “And if he refuses, I will find others.” He doesn’t doubt it. “Charter can use them as she needs.” She glances between them. “Will that suffice?”

A runner enters with three packages of more correspondence—Cullen’s is the smallest, while Josephine’s towers precariously, despite being bound up in twine. He shuffles through his pile.

Leliana exhales a breath. “It will do,” she allows.

“Where is Trevelyan?” Cullen asks, suddenly marking the absence.

“She told me she needed the morning,” Leliana says, gathering her own post. Josephine’s brow furrows at the statement, perturbed. “My agents are waiting to give reports.” And then she goes. 

Josephine gathers her massive pile of correspondence and hefts it into her arms. “Can you find time to meet with Lysandre and me today?” she asks him. It occurs to them both, near simultaneously, that they are alone. He can see it in how her eyes widen, just a little. “The afternoon bell. To produce a solution.”

“Absolutely,” he assures, and then she turns to go. His heart thuds in his chest, and he finds himself making haste to round the war table. “Hold, Ambassador. I have one of your letters.”

She sighs. “Inevitable, of course,” she says, turning back, and then he is there. He places a letter atop her pile, and presses his lips to her cheek, right where the fold of linen made living proof she had closed her eyes and dreamed.

Cullen hears her inhale, and go still, and he pulls away. His hand lingers on the soft wool, the hem of gold satin on her wrist.

“Good morning,” he says. He is close enough to count her eyelashes. Her eyes crinkle at the edges, even as her lips purse. His neck runs pink as the sunrise. He could leave it at this, he thinks again. As before. Warmth and quiet kisses. To come when called upon and no more. But his heart surges into his throat. Josephine deserves better. It makes his voice creak a little, as though he is very tired. “I would like to talk to you, later.” 

The feather of her quill-pen is brushed against his pauldron once, twice. “We have _literally_ just made an appointment, have we not?” 

“With the Wardens.” He gives her a narrow-eyed look. “This request is—personal.” 

Josephine manages the parchment envelope from the top of her pile. A pause. “This letter is addressed to _you_ ,” she says. “And for that meager kiss? One appointment today, and no more. I expect such antics from a little boy tugging at a lady’s petticoats in the marketplace.” 

“I am out of practice,” he says ruefully, “and you are far too short of stature. I would have to lie on the ground to attempt it.” 

She laughs, a gleam of white teeth. “Attempt a better maneuver next time,” Josephine tells him, “and I’ll consider—” 

Before all the words find their way out of her mouth, he closes the gap and stops their march. She tastes of tea, brewed strong with a few limp mint leaves. The scent of almonds, from the oil combed through her hair in the morning, in front of her mirror, long before the sun rose. 

Cullen has never spared a second for his own lips; hers are soft, even after months of bitter cold and wind. When he kisses her, she hesitates under him for a heartbeat before pressing up on the balls of her feet, as though she cannot help herself and has no desire to try. And he forgets his own roughness. He does not let go of her wrist, to steady them both. On even footing, there is a considerable amount of _bend_ involved in kissing Josephine. 

The knot in his chest does not dissolve, does not ease or decide to unwind, but in the span of this moment, he forgets it is there. Enough, for now. 

One kiss, but enough to leave him thoughtless when he pulls back, and she slips a lock of hair behind her ear. He opens his mouth and closes it, having promptly forgotten to prepare a retort. 

“I will spare you an hour today,” she decides, mouth set in a serious line, warmth in her eyes “After dinner, perhaps.” She flicks his pauldron with her thumb and forefinger— _ting._ “Now. Out of my sight.” 

He smacks his elbow against the door on his way out, the clang of the metal somewhat mitigating the mood, and the sound of laughter, pressed behind a hand, more than makes up for it. 

~~~

His day proceeds. 

Cullen hikes down to the camps to inspect the handful of troops Trevelyan brought home with her. They rested some in Val Royeaux, but nevertheless look threadbare and worn. Exposure to the red lyrium, even on non-templars, grinds on the bone. He makes note to explore better options—the lyrium must be hauled out and destroyed if they hope to keep a hold on the place. Even if the Red Templars no longer call it their stronghold, any host of bandits could easily claim it as their own. He will inquire with Lysandre about the state of the Wardens, perhaps ask Josephine about their ties to Orzammar or the Carta. Dwarves remain hearty against it, though not immune.

The time passes quickly as he makes his rounds. Six returned infected. An entire six, lost to nothing but standing too close to what is dangerous. 

Cullen cannot even visit them within their quarantine—too dangerous for anyone except the healer brave enough to tend them, to soothe their way. He stands there for a long while, watching shadows move. The canvas of the tent is thin enough for a silhouette or two to be seen when it crosses in front of the candlelight.

He cannot even thank them for what they’ve given. Cullen’s lost count of the men he’s watched die in pools of their own blood, whether on back-alley cobblestones or on the snowy field of battle. It’s the job of the living to escort them with dignity, even when their eyes run wild with tears, and their insides tumble out of their armor, and they die choking, or screaming, or with no sound at all.

Even if he were a faithless man, he’d believe that. But he’s useless here.

He stands there till the healer peers her head out of the tent. She’s a dwarf, skin creased with wrinkles and a wiry head of curls, black as night. She squints at him before making her way over. Her leather apron reminds his darker imagination of a butcher, but it is well-cared for and clean.

She angles her head up at him. One of her eyes is clouded with thick, grey mist. “Something I can do for you?”

He shakes his head. “I’m here to ask you the same. What can be done?”

She snorts, rolls one of her sleeves up where it’s fallen loose. “They’re at the end of their road, Commander. I’m helping them sleep. Tinctures for pain, for sleep, to make the muscles and bones lose their ability to stir. I bind a few who can’t stay still. The usual.” She lists her methods like a bar woman ticking off the types of ale to be served that evening. 

“Is it just the madness?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Only for two.” She casts a long a look back at the tent. “The others must’ve ingested it. Mayhap through a wound. It finds its way to the bone like a maggot. Must be how it grows.”

He admires her matter-of-fact nature; her words trigger a rise of bile, only because of the sharp dream-memory they ignite in the back of his brain. “Nothing can be done to remove it?”

“There’s an axeman who had it start in his forearm,” she says. “I took the arm up here, on the shoulder, but it’s still got him.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Carta sneaks always carry a potion—charcoal, elfroot, and a host of hard-to-find ingredients. They pour it into their wounds when they get sliced with a poison knife. I guess it hurts like the void and it leaves a wicked scar, but they pay for it in gold. By the pound.”

He sees where she’s headed. “That’d stop it?”

“It’d be worth a try,” she allows. “If you got cut through to the bone, you’d probably be done. You’re always going to lose some, you know that.” He does. “But your axeman in there shouldn’t be dead. And I’m thinking—the Emprise has the most red lyrium, but I’d stake all my fingers that there are other holes where they’ve been growing it. Big ones.”

Cullen promises her both Adan and Dagna, and the healer agrees. “Always wanted to meet her,” she says wistfully. “Heard she’s a right touch with a pair of forceps. Well. I’ll let you know when they pass.”

He opens his mouth, but before he can speak, she holds up a hand. “The lyrium lives on,” she says, “for a long while after they’re dead. It feeds.” She shrugs. “And it’s not merciful to work on them while they’re alive. They can’t understand. Let them go easy, ser.”

So he does, and goes, his fingertips stinging inside his gloves. 

His rounds continue. The soldiers take time. Some report lingering nightmares, terrors to make them bolt out of their own skins, and he has Manon make arrangements for Vivienne to advise the apothecary on a tincture to ease sleep. But he never blunts the blow—nightmares find no cure but talk. And time.

The Emprise du Lion was damnably bleak. Even the soldiers who march back from the Western Approach carry a sense of accomplishment. The desert didn’t eat them whole. The sand rusted permanently into the grooves of their armor serves as a trophy. They come back with pockets full of varghest toe-claws, monster scales glimmering when they examine them in the bright mountain sun.

Those who return from the Emprise sleep for days. They settle into their tents and do not emerge for food or drink, or hold their hands too close to the fire to warm them. Cullen makes his way to as many tents as he can, and sends Manon to the rest on strict instructions to probe little, and listen long.

He instructed his captains to do so after Adamant, but having run hard with them in the snow of the Emprise itself, he owes it to them to find his way to as many thresholds as he can. And he does.

It takes time, and before he can mark the change of the sun, he’s late.

Now, in Josephine’s office, arms crossed and leaning against a wall, she and Lysandre slowly circle each other like two jungle cats. Lysandre curls herself in the tall desk chair, while Josephine makes rapid notes on her parchment.

“Again, Warden-Constable.” Josephine betrays no tiredness whatsoever. “What do you require?”

Lysandre leans back in the tall chair, drumming a familiar tattoo on the arm. “Helpful, if there was infrastructure already, but we can build,” she told her. “Might be better that way anyhow.”

“Perhaps somewhere you can move quickly,” Cullen adds, “but not in the heart of civilization.”

Lysandre nods. “Near a waterway, maybe.” She rests her hand on her chin. “But no big cities. Too risky still.”

“Orlais, obviously, is out of the question.” Josephine makes a note on her tablet. “But there’s nowhere to send you there anyhow, unless you want to ride varghests in the desert.”

To his surprise, Lysandre almost smiles. “Plenty of darkspawn out there.” She considers the window. “I’d say—somewhere like the Storm Coast.”

Josephine gives Cullen a sideways look. “What a foul place to make your home,” she says, sounding amused.

The corner of his lip curls up. “The cliffs make for good defenses, and the water means ships to wherever you desire.” When Lysandre nods, he continues. “Entrances to the Deep Roads. A nasty enough place few will want to take it from you.”

“But hard to build upon,” Josephine says. “Hard to farm. A legion of—rogues—allies with us and has a holding there.”

Lysandre squints, and tilts her head at the euphemism. Cullen keeps most of the chuckle out of his voice, but cannot help the smirk. “Bandits,” he translates. Lysandre huffs a sound of amusement under her breath.

He leans back against the wall. “Given your history with the place, Warden-Constable, I didn’t think your people would settle to live there.”

“They won’t,” Lysandre admits. “But I like the idea. I want somewhere with thorns.”

He agrees. “Natural barriers. Thick forest, a desert, or mountains—”

“All suffice.” Lysandre steeples her fingers. “Somewhere we can make our own.”

A silence falls, but not uncomfortable. Lysandre glances at Josephine. “Is it an unreasonable list of terms?”

Cullen watches a look flicker across Josephine’s face—stunned surprise, that Lysandre would ask her anything, would even hint at her _approval_ , before the end of the world was upon them—that settles into calm thoughtfulness.

“Not at all,” she answers, and mulls something over in her brain. A soft wrinkle parts her brow as she thinks. “All requests made with good reason. Forest, you said?”

“It would work.” Lysandre shrugs. “Near enough to a road or a river. Cover helps.”

“What of the Free Marches?”

Hesitation. The question disturbs Lysandre. The sense of striving for a common goal is immediately replaced with suspicion; Cullen knows that if her staff were closer, she would have laid her hand upon it. 

Instead, she merely raises an eyebrow.

“Forests, marshes, swamps.” Josephine ticks off the list on her fingers. “Sparsely populated, compared to the rest of Thedas. Several crossroads, and if you’re close enough, the sea.”

The reasons come too quickly for improvisation. Cullen observes the careful way she diverts her eyes—her goal, perhaps, all along.

“And open land, easy to build on,” Josephine finishes. “Opportunity to make your people better, stronger.”

A pause.

“I don’t care for the Marches.” Lysandre folds her arms. “You know that.”

Josephine slides her hands behind her back, and says, “There is land for sale. Forty miles west of Tantervale on the Minanter.” 

The air in the room goes cold so quickly Cullen realizes it is magic—it tickles along his armor, the touch of a breeze. By instinct, his hand goes to his sword, but he only needs to rest his hand upon the pommel to right himself. Josephine catches him in a glance, a measured evaluation to ensure he’s all right, before she looks back to their charge.

A change has come over Lysandre, a brittle and bitter tension unlike anything she’s deigned to show them before. He watches her carefully, and Josephine waits for her to speak. Finally, she cranes her neck to find Josephine’s eyes. 

The location is too close to Lysandre’s origins. Even Cullen knows. Disappointment settles over the room, a chill that has nothing to do with magic. Josephine, at least, has earned enough in Lysandre’s eyes to not be brought down with a razor tongue at the suggestion. She earns more, he thinks, when she speaks first, declining so Lysandre doesn’t have to. “But Starkhaven’s prince is volatile,” she says, a thoughtful shrug. “It would spell trouble for you.”

Lysandre looks at her, stern face unreadable, before leaning back again into her chair, uneasy. “It would,” she agrees, and then it is quiet. She looks out the window, a slice of pale winter sunshine peeking through heavy clouds. 

Josephine turns her head a little to catch his eye, her lips in a tight line. They are out of cards. Again, no solution. Again, two hundred Inquisition allies left out in the cold. 

He shakes his head a little, when their gazes meet, and her eyes dim. She turns back to watch Lysandre, and to wait. 

They cannot possibly stay now, he knows, not after this conversation. They will wander east, or west, or wherever the wind takes them, until Celene orders them brought to heel and not even Josephine will have the wiles to promise them away. And then it will be Cullen who packs his sword and follows. 

Josephine doesn’t wilt under the silence; she would consider that amateurish. But he can tell, after more than a year of study, when defeat cuts her more deeply than she’d prefer. But being near her, and not a comfort, is momentarily unbearable. Cullen is close enough to touch his foot with hers. He adjusts his stance, the side of his boot pressing against one of the brown slippers she insists on wearing indoors. Only to say, _beside you._

Josephine exhales under her breath, the muscles between her shoulders loosening. That’s all she betrays. He is at least in the room to bear it with her, as they prepare for the blow together. 

“There’s no answer,” Lysandre says finally. Her words are simple and true, with all the dignity of retreat. “You have tried, and I have tried.” 

“Warden-Constable,” Josephine attempts, but Lysandre raises her hand. 

“We cannot stay,” she says. “It’s killing them to do it.” 

When Josephine knits her mouth into a tight line, it’s Cullen who nods. “You can’t bear a leash forever,” he says aloud. “You know what’s best for them. The Wardens aren’t built for it.” 

“Not at all.” Lysandre rubs her temples. “We’ll take our chances with fate. Leave on the morrow, march as far as we can towards Weisshaupt. Maker willing, we’ll find our way there.” 

“But you will not last,” protests Josephine, almost despite herself. A pot boiling over. “You are playing a game with time, and that’s all.” 

“We agree.” Lysandre raises an eyebrow, and Josephine falls silent. 

He shakes his head. “There are no excuses for our work. We have taken an abominably long time to produce anything close to what you need.” 

“I don’t know what your best is,” says Lysandre, so dryly he almost smiles. “But you’re cracking your heads against the wall to find us a safe haven. It’ll just—” 

Josephine inhales suddenly, raising a hand. Lysandre stops in the middle of her sentence, turning his head to face her. A smile breaks out over her face, small and genuine. “Oh,” she says. “Oh. So simple.” 

Cullen blinks. “Ambassador?” 

“ _Haven._ ” Josephine says the word with the fervor of a prayer. 

There’s a pause before Lysandre adjusts herself in her chair. “Isn’t that—” 

“Corypheus attacked us there and we fled,” Cullen answers her, still bewildered. 

But Josephine is alive with the challenge. “True. But it is perfect.” 

He turns his head to her, mutters under his breath. “It is the site of a massacre.”

“For us,” Josephine says with the utmost seriousness. She turns to Lysandre. “For us. We will never rebuild there.” She makes sure to meet her eyes. “We talked of the Storm Coast not an hour ago. A place you cannot return. Haven is that for us. It will always sit empty.” 

Lysandre narrows her gaze. “But if it’s unlivable—” 

“Only somewhere no one wants,” Josephine repeats. “Hidden in the mountains. Trevelyan ordered it excavated more than a year ago—to find the dead.” Her voice softens a little. “It has been cleared.” 

“Forsaken in every sense,” says Cullen slowly, testing it out. “But the roads we built and repaired are still there. ” 

Lysandre crosses her arms. “Will Ferelden bear more Wardens?” 

A little flutter of Josephine’s hand. “The king owes me a favor,” she says, in a tone that says _several, actually_. “He is a Warden, and so is his wife. It is close enough to the border than you may defend Orlais if the need arises.” 

Lysandre’s lips purse. Clenching her teeth against _yes._ He can read the stubbornness in her face as though it were his own. 

“Answer me truly,” she asks, tinged with honest uncertainty. Her pride. “Is it charity, to take it?” 

Silence falls. He watches Josephine consider this carefully, with an exacting precision. 

When she speaks, she speaks with a reverent confidence, unraveling her own memory. “When we fled Haven,” she says, “all seemed lost. We had lost scores of men and women to the Red Templars and the fire. The work of our Inquisition wasted. Our Herald, flattened somewhere under an avalanche.” She rubs her temple with a finger. Lysandre tilts her head infinitesimally. 

Listening, Cullen realizes. He swallows, barely daring to breathe in case he disturb the peace. 

“But, like a miracle, she reappeared.” Josephine’s eyes wander to the grey sky peering through the top of her high window, the dim light shining in. “Told us to go north. And we found this place. Dank, and cold, and absolutely _desolate._ ”

“Entirely unlivable,” Cullen can’t help but add, and Josephine gives a short, high laugh of agreement. With the sound comes the rush of falling into the same rhythm. He knows this play, this reassurance from her. The same push and pull of standing defending the Wardens and the Inquisition from a sputtering group of Templars. 

Something like a dance, he imagines. A one-and-two step. Simple and instinctive. He knows which movements are his. 

“The _cost_ of the repairs,” she says, in a voice typically reserved only for mourners at a funeral. “Maker, the gold I had to raise. And no stores of anything. No wood, no coal—” 

“No stone,” says Cullen, and watches her hide a smile, despite herself. 

“A fortress the size of a mountain, and it still wasn’t enough,” Josephine tells her. “Barely enough room for those who survived, and then we grew. Soldiers coming in, builders, pilgrims, every day, and nowhere for them to sleep.” 

“I saw a tent made out of potato sacks,” Cullen recalls, “and someone’s wedding dress. You could tell by the lace. The surgeon needed more shelter. Children, not yet seven years old, going up on the mountain to find elfroot, or carrying water buckets heavier than they were. The mountains beat us mercilessly all the way from Haven, and no one rested that first week. There was too much work to do.” 

Josephine nods, one quick movement of her chin. “We had to build,” she says. “There was so much here, but we had to build everything again. Half-rotted and falling apart. We had to be ready again.”

Lysandre considers this, levels her gaze at Josephine. This is the moment, Cullen realizes, where Josephine can change the course. Where she can stop two-hundred-odd Wardens from marching off to gamble with their fate, if she says the right words. He watches the gears turn, the way she smooths her skirts and gathers herself. When she looks up at Lysandre, she is ready. 

“Skyhold was a gift,” she admits. Her voice is quiet, but never has he heard it more certain. “I’m not religious by any means. I know how odd it sounds. But there is nothing to explain how else it came to us when we had nowhere to turn. How swiftly we found it, as though by magic.” She shakes her head. “I have no explanations. We went north, and discovered it, a husk of its former glory. And now it is ours. We have carved it into what we need.” 

She raises her head. He knows she considers him in her periphery. He swallows. He is part of that _we_ , like so many others. 

“No one can take it from us,” Cullen mutters, finally, to fill the space, the words both slow and true. 

There is silence, then, as Lysandre considers this. Josephine approaches the desk, all three steps it takes, and gently perches her fingers along the edge. 

“Perhaps, Warden-Constable,” she says, “you will merely decide to take your people east. Lead them through the crucible in the mountains. The last leg of this endless, winding journey from the desert. And you will find a gift of your own.” She ducks her head a little. “Yours, to rebuild and transform until it is no longer a boon, but your home.” 

The silence returns. Cullen holds his breath and eyes them both. Josephine slides her hands behind her back, the way she does when she waits for an answer.

Lysandre slowly rises to her feet, drawing herself up to her full height. She is a woman made of iron, an immovable rock battered to and fro by sea. She twitches her fingers, and her staff slides gracefully from the wall to her open hand. Stretches a little, glances out the high glass panes of the window. “I will be forced,” she says, “to be your neighbor.” 

Josephine folds her hands in front of her, to keep from fidgeting. “A common complaint,” she admits. 

“You’ll get used to it,” Cullen says. 

The quiet after he says this stretches so long it nearly extinguishes whatever hope they’d rekindled in the moment. They teeter on the edge of a held breath, the glossy film of a soap bubble from the wash. Even a blink will disturb the peace too soon. 

They stand, and wait, and wait, and wait. And Lysandre considers. 

She finally takes a breath—the kind that precedes a full, drawn-out sigh, as weary as it gets. 

“Warden-Constable?” asks Josephine, with no trace of impatience. 

Lysandre licks her lips and exhales, with the determination of one unrolling a map and measuring the long march still to go before sundown. “Very well,” she says. “Very well.” 

Josephine exhales. He turns his head, catches her eye. The relief lining them nearly makes him dizzy. There is a distant ringing between his ears. It is done. It is done. 

He opens his mouth, as though he has something to say, to add, and then the door of Josephine’s office crashes open with a sudden bang of wood against the door. They turn, and Manon is there, a parchment clutched in her hand. Out of breath—she has run here. 

“Apologies.” She bows at the waist, hurriedly. Cullen immediately knows something is amiss. Manon is a stickler for etiquette, and never enters a room without knocking, even if she’s been summoned herself. “I need the commander.” 

Josephine nods. “Go,” she says. “I will find you later.” 

And just like that, he’s whisked out into the great hall, present concerns put aside. “What is it?” 

“Ser,” she begins, looking wary, She pulls a slip of parchment from her pocket. “I—I need to see the Inquisitor, but she’s indisposed.” At Cullen’s look, Manon nods her head towards the war room. “With Morrigan,” she says.

“Then they’re not to be disturbed.” That was that. Manon shifts back and forth, a green anxiety. 

“Captain,” he presses.

“They went inside the mirror.” They both pause, and Cullen merely tilts his head. “They just—disappeared. But I need her.” Manon worries at her lower lip. “You will need her, Commander, instantly.”

“We’ll manage. What’s happened?” Cullen asks, eyes falling on the paper.

“Well, ah.” She unrolls the parchment, holds it out with both hands. “This is all he left.”

Cullen takes the paper and reads the words. And then he reads them again. 

“Warden Blackwall, ser.” Manon can’t keep the confusion from her voice. “He’s gone.”

~~~

So they search.

The note is so small, so simple. _I have gone to do my duty. Take care. Be safe._

As he walks the tower, up the stairs, past Solas’ rotunda, he finds Dorian secreted away in the library with a book. He peers at him over the pages. “Well,” he says, leaning back and letting the book sink to his lap, “that serves me, for thinking you couldn’t resemble soured milk any further.”

He wordlessly hands Dorian the note. It takes him only a moment to identify the writer, and then his brows knit themselves together. “But why?” he asks.

Cullen nods. “And why _now?_ ”

Dorian folds the parchment neatly into a square and places it back in Cullen’s outstretched glove. “I’ll ask around,” he says simply. “Maker. Where’s Trevelyan?” 

“My lieutenant saw her enter the Eluvian with Morrigan,” Cullen says. “She doesn’t know. Not yet.” He pauses. “I’d like to have more to give her than the damned parchment.”

Manon goes down to the camps with a few of her most trusted people and combs through the tents again. Cullen talks to every guard posted at the gate for the last two days and finds a young woman from Nevarra who saw him leave down the mountain before the sun rose.

“Did he offer coin for your silence?” Cullen asks.

She shakes her head. “Just said he was taking care of business,” she admits. “He’s in her confidence, isn’t he? I thought nothing of it. Maybe she’d sent him on a task.”

Trevelyan returns from the mirror, but is only unoccupied in that short span between the hall where they keep the Eluvian and Skyhold’s chapel. No one gets a word with her. 

Cullen finds himself waiting outside in the garden as night falls. They are always empty this time of day, when dinner begins and it’s too cold to stand under the clouds. But he knows Trevelyan’s in there, and he must be the one to deliver the news. So he waits, thinks of sitting down on one of the benches, and decides better of it.

Dorian returns to him an hour into his vigil. It is Sera who finds out that Warden Blackwall left with the rabble-rousers from the Chantry that morning from Mosshome. Ser Caradoc, the Antivans, and all the rest who came to take the Grey Warden leadership back to Val Royeaux in the name of justice. They left together, Blackwall on his own horse, and unshackled. 

Dorian told him not to wait up long, to wait till morning, but he couldn’t. None of the pieces made sense, and he certainly wouldn’t abandon his post now. The Inquisitor needed to know so she could instruct him how to shape the sword next. And it was no new occurrence for him to linger near the chapel, whether within or without. 

Some soldiers snicker, he knows, on how long he spends in the chapel each week. The Inquisition welcomes everyone—hardly the religious crusade it pretended to be years ago. The hours there give him peace. 

But nothing compares to how often Trevelyan secrets herself inside when she is home. Hours and hours on her knees. She never told him what she prayed for—he imagines she does not even tell her companion. Trevelyan guards her confidence carefully. What exists between her and the Maker cannot be revealed. It has always given him a sense of relief, ever since the beginning. Trevelyan is unquestionably devout. For her, the path is open, always, and lit by flame. It is how she makes her decisions. A debate between herself and the Maker she serves.

He has wished, more than once, his own faith would burn so brightly. 

When the door finally swings open, Trevelyan runs a hand over her face before she notices him.

“How long have you been waiting there?” she asks, folding her arms.

He shrugs. “Not long.” It has been hours, surely she can tell. The cold goes all the way to his bones. “I have news.”

Not even a sigh slips from her before she gestures. “Ah. That kind of news.” When he tilts his head, she says, “From you, it’s rarely good, Commander.”

“That is the nature of the military,” Cullen admits. “Inquisitor—Warden Blackwall is gone.”

She blinks once, twice, then holds out a hand. He deposits the note into it. She unrolls it, and studies it much longer than any of the words warrant. Looking for clues, he supposes.

After a moment, she crumbles it in her fist.

Good. A certainty of action. Fire in her blood. This is what he wanted. “Inquisitor,” he inquires, “what would you have me do?”

A deep breath in, a deep breath out. He thinks she will need time, or even go back into the chapel. But the decision is swift.

“Nothing,” she says. “Nothing at all.”

Cullen blinks. “But he is gone—”

“Precisely.” She worries at her hands, rubbing her fingers as though they ache. “He has decided to go, and it is not our choice.”

“He served us well.” Cullen did not intend to stand in this garden and argue with his superior, but the thought of abandoning the thread seems ridiculous at best. “Bled for us. You were ready to trust him with our forces if I fell.”

The wrinkle between her brows furrows. “I cannot control him,” she says plainly. “You are asking me to seek him out and convince him to stay, when I see nothing in this note to rouse my suspicions.”

“The _nothing_ is what makes me suspicious.” Cullen folds his arm. Their breaths make white puffs in the night air. “This is out of character.”

She shakes her head. “Not really,” she tells him. “Blackwall keeps to himself.”

“Let’s find out where he goes.” Cullen attempts a bargain. “This—it leaves a foul taste in my mouth, Inquisitor.”

“I understand that.” Trevelyan speaks patient words but her voice grows thin. “But he is the captain of his fate. Not me. I imagine he will return when he is able.”

 _I am away to do my duty. Take care. Be safe._ “But this is goodbye. It is giving up his sword.” Surely she can see that. “With no intention of returning.”

“Commander.” She touches her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “It is three lines.”

Cullen takes a step forward. “He bled for us,” he says. “For you. For your honor, for your safety. I can’t leave him to whatever wolves call.” Trevelyan’s gaze grows sharp. He stands his ground. “He deserves better than that.”

“No.” She doesn’t even pause. “It is hard enough to be told day in and out I must command the course of the future for the world. Why do you demand I do it for his life, too?” Cullen opens his mouth, but she holds up a hand. “No. If Blackwall chose to leave, it was his choice, and I’ll not expend effort to needle him back into our arms. He’s a man of free will.”

“Not of his free will,” he argues. “He pledged his life to our cause. He—” He fumbles for the trump card. “He left with the Chantry. The ones waiting at Mosshome.” 

“Did they take him in irons?” Trevelyan asks simply, one brow arched. 

“No,” he says. “He left with them on horseback.” 

“Then he is still a man with free will.” Trevelyan steps around him and goes up the steps to the walkway. The torchlight flickers. “He makes his own decisions, Cullen. Just as I do.” She pauses at the threshold of the door, hand on the knob. “Just as you should.”

Then she goes inside, and Cullen stands alone. His hands shake. Whether from chill or weakness, it does not matter.

~~~

He lumbers back to the Great Hall, bones stiff. It stands near empty but for guards and a few of Skyhold’s tenants standing near the fires, warming their hands. It is no warmer than outside, if truth be told. He can see the edges of his own breath.

He closes the door to the courtyard slowly behind him, and his eyes fall on Josephine’s door. He thinks of his own empty office, and how the day has dissolved. And Blackwall. Trevelyan. The interaction leaves him bitter with anger, which is near drowned out by simple and utter confusion. They have lost someone in their midst, and Cullen refuses to leave his people behind. He cannot say he knows Blackwall well—they’ve shared a drink once or twice, and Cullen prepared him on the eve of Adamant before they ventured west. But guilt makes fresh meat of his heart to think they leave a soldier to sort out his destiny on an empty road, alone.

The day’s events pile, fill him, and flood out, leaving him empty. He does not know where to go, or where to start first, or how to draw apart the knot. His head aches behind his eyes. In a moment that seems to stretch on for hours into the night, he merely stands there, touches his fingertips to the bridge of his nose, and prays for an answer.

“Commander?” A voice, certain and quiet, breaks the silence. His eyes snap open, and Josephine stands ten meters away in the threshold of her office.

Her face is softened by concern. No tablet in her hands, so her fingers worry at each other, having nothing to write, and nothing to say. Cullen moves before he is bidden, because he feet know the answer, even when his mind cracks in two.

She holds out her hand. “Come,” she says, flexing her fingers, “and keep your appointment.” 

And the pit drops from his stomach. Somehow, in the chaos of the search and all his waiting for Trevelyan, he had forgotten this was waiting. And when he follows, lumbering across the hall, each step echoes. 

Her fingers brush against the iron of his bracer as they come through the doorway; she pulls her hand away as though it stings. “How long have you been outside?” she asks. “You’re cold as death.” 

“A long time,” he says, because it’s true. Cullen ambles to the fire, pokes it with an iron and tosses a log from her pile. The coals of her fire burn low; the drafts from the window whisk across the floorboards. She has been out with Lysandre for the day, he realizes, with preparations. Good. Josephine is quiet as she arranges envelopes on her desk, and then rummages for something in the trunk under her window. (The height of which, he notes, is just right for a person of her stature to stand on and easily look out the pane. Curious.) 

When the fire catches again, he chooses the bench across from the hearth instead of one of her straight-backed seats—the thought of folding his armored limbs up inside one of her decorative chairs makes his bones ache. 

The warmth begins to prickle at his toes. A loud _flumpf_ as a thick pelt of black and white fur cascades directly over his head and shoulders, heavier than it has any right to be. He adjusts it so it sits on his shoulders, fur pooling onto the floor. At least it’s warm. “Maker,” Cullen says. “Is this a rug?” 

“A gift from Sky Watcher,” corrects Josephine from behind him. “A bear they hunted down in their part of the Frostbacks. To solidify our… alliance of sorts.” She clears her throat. “I—well. It doesn’t quite suit my office.” 

“I will bear it,” Cullen says, “for patriotism, I suppose.”

She stares at him for a moment before groaning, pinching the bridge of her nose. “ _Puns_ ,” she says, full of despair, and he laughs, quiet. “You encroach on Leliana’s territory.” 

He grins a little, in spite of himself, and she waves a hand at him, pursing her lips to keep from smiling. “Lysandre is assembling the Wardens to leave in the late evening tomorrow,” she continues. “I think it will be best under the cover of night. Just in case.” 

“I will let the field captains know.” He presses his thumb between his brow. “It’ll be clear tomorrow night. With torches, they’ll find their way easy enough. We did.” 

“I would like to see them safely off,” Josephine says. “If you’re amenable. The plan we devised for their exit sits on your desk in a report.” He can feel her eyes on the back of his scalp. “But I don’t think you’ve been back there yet today.” 

“No,” he admits. “No. I haven’t.” 

Quiet. She waits, and he desperately attempts to collect the words he needs to say. But he hasn’t spared a thought for them since this morning, one golden moment in the war room. And the thought of voicing anything, anything at all that lies in his heart, makes the knot in his chest constrict. 

He thinks to make room for her on the bench next to him, but the idea comes too late, and she folds herself into one of her wooden chairs adjacent to the fire, leaning over one of the arms. 

“Cullen,” she says, “what did you want to speak about?” No answer. She raises an eyebrow. “Shall I resort to charades?” 

He huffs a dry laugh at that, shakes his head. It can wait, he decides. What he needs can wait, because the work won’t. Whatever worries press on his heart will be put to bed for another day, another meeting, another time. No questions of _do you feel for me as I do for you?_ , stuttered out while his face flushes. No staring into her eyes, waiting for her answer. 

The work, he thinks. The work instead. 

So Cullen finds the little scrap of parchment. Offers it to her without a word. She hesitates, before plucking it from his fingers. A strange look passes across her face—disappointment.

Then she focuses. He furrows his brow, watches her read it again. 

“Who wrote this?” she asks. 

“Warden Blackwall.” He runs his tongue over his teeth. “He left us.” 

Her eyes narrow instantly. “But why?” 

“I heard he left with Ser Caradoc this morning.” He watches the fire, collecting the memory. “They all left on horseback going west. Might be falling on his sword for the Wardens or—something else.”

“They needed ‘a few.’” Josephine furrows her brow. “Would they be satisfied with only one?”

He winces. “It doesn’t matter,” he tells her, after a moment of thought. 

She eyes him carefully, evaluating his profile like a mathematician considering a new proof. It will only be moments before she finds the problem herself, and despite the length of the day, Cullen does not wish to be obstinate. Not to her. 

“We’re not to pursue.” He lets the words fall, one by one, with all their stony weight. 

Silence. “Ah,” Josephine says. “That is why you are upset.” 

He straightens a little. “I’m not.” 

Josephine tilts her head, looks him over once from his scalp to the toes of his boots. “You are hunched over like a gargoyle in a Nevarran cathedral,” she informs him wryly, “staring into that fire like you want to wrestle it.” 

“I’m _not._ She’s decided. No point in dwelling on it.” 

“Is that why you’ve frozen yourself half-solid?” Josephine asks. “Waiting for her outside the chapel?” When he nods, a wrinkle appears between her dark brows. “What did she say, precisely?” 

“If he left of his own free free will,” Cullen repeats, “he’d return by it.” 

She gives a short laugh. “As though it were a boat he could sail upstream,” she says, and presses her fingers against her temples. “None of it makes sense.” 

“I don’t know why he’d go,” Cullen says. 

“I can’t think of why she would _let him_ ,” Josephine says, and is too full of contrariness to sit any longer. She stands to pace by the fire, away from him, back a little, and then away again. Each length of her journey pulls him, as though tugging a string tied under his chestplate. 

The fire crackles, a log shifts onto its back in the coals. The quiet is thoughtful. And then Josephine bridges the gap between them—her shoes come into view between his boots. Her sudden closeness makes whatever he thought to add fade from his brain like mist. If he leaned his head forward, he could rest the crown of his head against her. The urge is so overwhelming he cannot move at all. _What am I doing?_ he thinks blearily, just as he hears Josephine’s voice. 

“Cullen,” she says and he gazes up at her, still wrapped in that ridiculous pelt, “is this why you are here?” 

He blinks. “What?” 

“I thought you wanted to speak to me.” She raises an eyebrow. “Or do you only want to speak of work?

Cullen opens and closes his mouth. She folds her arms, with a pointed look in her eyes. 

“This seemed—pressing,” he finally says. “Important enough to take precedence.” 

“Perhaps.” She turns on her heel and sets the parchment on the mantle. “But it will wait an hour.” 

“But—”

“It will _wait_ ,” she repeats. “You are here to talk, yes?” 

His mouth goes dry. “I—yes.” 

“And not about Blackwall,” Josephine says, turning from the mantle. “Although I did ask. And not about Trevelyan.” 

“No. I did not.” They are in agreement. 

“You want to speak about you and I. That is plain enough. Say what you need and we will continue from there.” She is cast in shadow with the fire behind her, making the gold at her wrists flicker where they catch the light. 

But he doesn’t know how to start. There is no escaping her gaze, and that goes for what he chooses to hide as well as what he doesn’t know. “You know that I—well.” He rubs the back of his neck. “What I did in the Graves, I did for you.” 

“Yes.” Her tone is even, patient. “We spoke of it. Or—” She reconsiders. “Shouted of it, in my case.” 

“I’ve made how I feel plain. But I—” His words fail, as soon as his mind touches the question. The silence stretches on in terminal horror. “This is difficult,” he finally manages, having waited too long. 

He can feel her bristle. Watches her fingers pinch the bridge of her nose. She takes a breath to her gather patience, but can’t keep the dryness out of her voice. “I’m sure.”

“Not because of you,” he adds quickly, “or, well—actually. Because of you, but not—not the way you’re thinking.” 

“I can only imagine.” Her arms are folded tightly across her chest. “You are trying to accomplish alone what I usually do for you.” 

_That_ makes him jerk his head toward her, indignant. “Am I?” 

Josephine nods once. “Speaking,” she says simply. “You are trying to talk about something, instead of having me drag it out of you.” Rubbing her temple, she closes her eyes. “Perhaps you’re discovering the difficulties on both ends.” 

The words pluck him like a string, a clear reverberation cutting all the way to the heart. Moving is easier, always, so he shuffles to the side of the bench, the pelt falling to the floor. They can start here, he thinks, where they have started many times before. This, he can do. “I’m sorry,” he says, and means it. “Sit. Here, with me.” He licks his lips. “Please.” 

She indulges him, perching on the edge of the bench. Close, but not quite close enough to touch. The 

space, on purpose. To give him room to think, to breathe. 

“I’d rather talk of work than how I feel,” he says, a little bluntly. 

“Obviously,” she agrees, and he shakes his head so suddenly it silences her. 

“It’s how I _live_.” He looks into the fire. “Why do you think I preferred wandering headlong into the Graves rather than simply taking your hand and telling you what I had known for—for weeks?” 

He listens to her breathe in once. He is sure some part of her she understands this already, but it’s important for him to offer it as evidence before her as he fumbles on. 

“It’s how I know you best,” he continues. “I think that will change. But I can talk to you honestly of work as easily as—breathing.” 

Josephine turns her head, regarding his face. “I wonder if I might pose a solution?” she asks. 

He blinks. Not at all what he expected. “Please.” 

After a moment of thought, Josephine says, “It has become very complicated. The work. The future. Us.” 

“Yes,” he says simply. 

“Do you remember,” she begins, “the last time we fought? After you found out about the contract on my life. When we could not speak to one another.” 

“I do.” The memory of it clouds his throat with leaves. He swallows once, twice, anxiety churning in his belly. 

“I—well. I had enough of it. The fighting. It hurt to speak to you. It hurt to breathe the same air.” The quiet way she reflects this makes him ache. He reaches for her hand, but she slides up from the bench, the idea simmering too strongly for her to remain still. Or perhaps holding the memory of that time still cuts too close to the bone. He can remember it clearly as the bitter taste of blood in his mouth, the senseless worry. The grief for what they had lost. It had rendered him empty. 

“I wrote a contract,” she says. “A treaty.” 

It takes Cullen a moment to find his voice. “You what?”

“It spelled out how we would stop debating,” she continues. “That we would only speak to each other in the war room, with the Inquisitor or other advisors at the ready. We would not find ourselves alone, under any circumstances. We would never speak of anything but the Inquisition.” 

Relief at never looking at the document, or even feeling its rolled weight in his hand washes through him with a painful speed. He can’t say what he would do if it were pressed into his hands. If he read it, and saw what she decreed. They’d never have mended from it. He’s sure.

“Perhaps it might—serve. As a model.” She turns to eye her desk with a furrowed brow, as though remembering where she buried it. 

His mouth runs dry as sand. “For what?” he rasps. His heart begins to pound—why this, why would she reach for this _first_? 

“A similar agreement might be useful.” She shrugs. “For this. ‘To move forward.’ What we can speak of, and what we shouldn’t, while we are—together.” She turns to look into the fire, and he can read the uncertainty in her shoulders, in the way she shifts her weight carefully from foot to foot. “Everything is tangled, and I don’t know where it begins and ends.” 

“We work together,” he tries, and the knot in his chest constricts so tightly breathing becomes a chore when she shakes her head. 

“But we are more than that, are we not?” Her fingers tap her chin. “We stumble upon the right moments to just be ourselves, but perhaps we need—clearer lines.” 

“Josephine,” he says, instead of _stop._

She holds up a hand. “It’s only a matter of rationing time. To merely—” 

A wind roars in his ears. The words tumble through, heavy as avalanche and taut with his own fear—the thought of parceling out pieces of himself for certain moments with her drains his mind of any sense. He is always himself with her, whether arguing over strategy or listening to her speak about her family. Always. 

“No,” Cullen says, short and sharp. “No—I can’t. I can’t negotiate what I feel for you like a piece of land we found by accident in Orlais.” 

She turns on her heel. “I’m not asking that. But even you can see how tangled this can become.” 

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know.” 

Not enough, and he knows it. Her brow furrows; her gaze rests on him with a physical weight, as though she pressed her hands into his shoulders. The silence goes on for more than a breath—she takes a step towards him and commands, “Cullen, _attempt._ Say what you want to say or I will go, and we will try again.” 

His vision blurs, hot with shame, and he’s staring directly into the fire when he says, “I’ve never done this before.” 

Everything in the room stops. The crackle of the hearth is the only sound. She stands completely still. He runs a hand over his face. It’s out of him, at least, extricated like an arrow from his shoulder. 

“Never…” Josephine begins, and trails off, all the heat gone out of her voice. 

“Spoken about any kind of future.” His hand rubs at the back of his neck. “No matter how small.” 

She makes a soft noise of understanding. “Not even with Trevelyan?”

“No. We never bothered to talk of it. Too brief.” He exhales one long, slow breath. 

Her eyebrow raises. It’s not the way she would proceed. “Not quite impossible,” she says. 

“That’s just the start,” he tells her quickly, looking back into the fire. “We should understand better what this means for our work, but I don’t yet know—what this means for you.” 

It changes the silence—makes it run cold with disbelief, as Josephine raises her head to stare at him. It is not a good turn.

“You know I care for you,” he says, limply. “But that’s my first question when considering the future.” 

“Ah. ‘Is there one at all?’” Josephine asks, and he nods limply. 

“Affection,” begins Cullen, not wanting to say _when you touch me_ , “is—good. I’m not saying it’s not enough.”

“But it isn’t.” Josephine nods her head once. “That’s the point of the question itself.” 

She looks thoughtful, worrying her lower lip. Remembering, perhaps, the stupid promises he dashed outside her door, of bearing sorrows and shadows, but never silence. He did not understand until this very moment why the sound of her voice was so precious to him, why any word she said ruled the arc of the sun. 

It became real. Real as a sword in his hand, as a vow on his skin, because she understood the weight of words, and silence promised nothing. 

He stares at the fire, and every breath he exhales drags out for miles. Time stops while she thinks. 

When he finally finds the courage to turn his head and look at her, she considers the tall pane of her window, the dim moonlight peering through the glass. Under the eaves of silence, she looks—unwell. If they had been arguing, she would have leapt up by now to rail at him. But instead she’s tightly coiled, and strangely at a loss for words. 

His heart loses any of the strength it had and puddles out in his chest. “Josephine.” 

“No.” She raises a hand. “You have asked your question and I owe you an answer.” 

“I don’t—”

“I am merely distressed you do not know.” Her words are strained. Her hand closes; he knows her nails press into the soft flesh of her palm. “How I could rail at you in the courtyards and on the steps and not make it plain how I feel.” 

It all makes sense, sudden as the crack of a whip. It is Josephine, who will find ways to examine her own movements and fine-tune her own burdens until they encompass an entire world. Combing through her own words. Wondering where she went awry, and it’s farther from the truth than they’ve been all evening. 

“Then we’re even,” he says steadily, and her dark head turns from the window. Curls of her hair have escaped from behind her ear. “It’s all right to be at odds. I’m—never not at odds.”

It steadies her. Her gaze clears, fixing on him with its usual precision. Without breaking his gaze, her hand moves between them, and she squeezes his arm. 

His muscles tighten on instinct, as though to break the hold, but she doesn’t falter. Josephine likes symbolism. Dramatic gestures. Her fondness of finding this bare space, where armor does not cover, where he can feel the warmth of her hand all the way through to his bones, is deliberate, he realizes. Her palm along the muscle. Her thumb, pressing in, holding on. 

It is good to be held, even just by a hand. 

He makes his arm relax, even as the heat from her hand finds its way through leather and linen. The whole room becomes clearer, drawn in better lines. 

Josephine clears her throat. “I have done a thing without telling you,” she says slowly. “A little as you did for me.” 

Unanticipated. He blinks once, twice, before cocking his head. 

“There was no blood.” She gives him a crooked look. “I have no dashing scar to show for it.” 

Her fingers tighten along his flesh at the statement—so quick they must be unconscious. A reflex of pain, latent anger at what he did. Cullen knows that will never change. It is its own scar. 

“Then it’s a mystery to me.” Like most things. He says it to let them breathe. She takes the moment to consider her words. 

When she speaks, she unravels the tale carefully, every detail at her choosing. “Halamshiral,” she begins. “I’m sure you remember it.” 

“I do,” says Cullen dryly. So does his body. 

“The man who groped you.” She raises an eyebrow. “Silver mask, with raven feathers. Pushed you against the wall.” 

He had put the memory aside until now, but the foul taste in his mouth is just as bitter. “He was only a drunk—” He searches for a word and can’t find one. “Suitor? A noble. Nothing more.” 

“Quite.” Josephine says, tilting her head. “I ran him out of Orlais.” 

A long pause. 

“Out of the entire South, actually.” She smoothes her skirt with her free hand. “He runs a linen stand in a bazaar out of Kassel in the Anderfels, now. Handkerchiefs, I believe, and bedsheets.” 

Cullen’s mouth has gone dry as the desert. “What,” he attempts, and then tries again, “what did he do before?” It’s a stupid question and the only one he has the wit to ask. 

“Oh, he was the richest man in Val Firmin.” She says it in the same tone as _a fishmonger of some skill._ “Owned an incredibly lucrative dawnstone mine, and headed a guild of weaponsmiths.” 

“Now he sells handkerchiefs,” Cullen repeats, dully. 

She nods once. “Yes.” 

He doesn’t have to ask her why—he waits, instead, and watches her find the words. It’s rare when Josephine doesn’t have an answer at the ready. He suspects very few have the privilege of watching her find the right words for anything. So he gives her time. That, at least, they have. 

She exhales. “I ran him out of Orlais,” she says, “fifteen minutes after you told me what he looked like.” 

Cullen stares at her—he can’t put his thumb on what he assumed, but it certainly wasn’t that. He had thought of a few well-placed letters, perhaps, here and there. She’d done similar maneuvers with distasteful rumors about Trevelyan or to help smooth the way for a diplomatic deal. 

He’d watched her duel, at Halamshiral. He’d always think of it as such, because that’s what it was. Toe-to-toe, insults and sly words and perfectly placed compliments, like a deadly and elegant fencing. He had not imagined her doing so on his behalf. 

His heart regains its strength, and starts to thumping against his ribs. 

“I saw him while trying to find the Inquisitor,” she continues, “I was heading around a corner and I saw the feathers. Heard his laugh. I knew precisely who he was.” Her nose wrinkles in disgust. No surprise his assailant was unsavory and uncouth. 

“From before?” 

“Of course.” She raises an eyebrow. “Leliana and I had been tracking him for several months—dealing for other sides of the war, highly illegal. We were waiting for the perfect favor to spring the trap.” 

He nods. 

A pause, now. She opens and closes her mouth. “I forgot it all,” she murmurs, in a voice quiet enough he strains to hear it over the crackling of the fire. “Our plans. Our waiting. I saw him and all I could think of was you.” She grips him tightly as a shield, her fingertips pressing into leather. “For him to treat you so. Like cattle. You, who had tried so hard to play the role demanded of you, in a realm you’d never touched.” She shakes her head. “It was _intolerable._ ” 

Josephine would not even bear arms to save her own life, but this was—the equivalent of taking up sword and shield, for her. She had gone to battle for his honor and left the winner. She had gone so far as to make sure she remained so. 

It blindsides him like a blow to the ribs. Completely off-kilter. It is so far beyond his ability to imagine that her office suddenly seems hazy, as though he stumbled into a fever dream. No one, _no one_ , has ever looked at Cullen—at the very least, a stout man in armor and arms, never mind the survivor of Kinloch, or Meredith’s right hand, the Knight-Commander of a crumbling Kirkwall, Commander of the Inquisition’s fighting forces—and thought, _I will protect him._

“You didn’t have to do it,” Cullen says, softly. If he is honest, his pride speaks for him a little. “I wouldn’t have asked.” And her eyes flash. 

“Of course I didn’t,” she snaps. “No more than you had to march into the Graves and fight a giant yourself. But I found him and I couldn’t bear the thought of the night continuing without justice. You deserved better, and more, but that was what I could provide.” 

He recognizes the look, remembers the shouting at him on the stairs. Her pride, too. But he hadn’t done it because he believed her incompetent. He had the means to go, and went. As did she.

Cullen says her name, like throwing out a tether, but she shakes her head. 

“I took his entire world away,” mutters Josephine. “Every last inch. And I did it for you.” 

Silence. Her turn, to wait. The words are steady, but she lines his arm with one circle from her thumb, as though they are a blow she tries to soften. It is—a grand thing, she has done, and yet so quiet he never would have known unless she chose to tell him now. 

“I’ve never—” he tries, and then tries again. “No one has never done… something like that for me.” He swallows. “I don’t know what to say.” 

Her eyes glint in the firelight, bright with agreement. “Then we are, as you said, even. Can you see why the separation is important, now? Of business and—you?” 

He pauses, just a moment too long, and feels her tense beside him. “I do,” he says slowly, “in theory. But it’s not in my nature. I don’t know how.” 

She sighs, a deeply weary sound he can feel in his own chest. Disappointment. She slides away from him, releasing his arm, and stands, rushing invisible dust from her skirts. “Then we must continue to—speak of it,” she says, roundly. 

He eyes her. “You nearly said negotiate.” 

“Well, forgive me, _Commander,_ ” she says distastefully and folds her arms across her chest, lips drawn thinly. “Does my answer satisfy?” 

He looks down at her shoes, her small feet, the stone floor beneath them. “Yes,” he tells her quietly. “I don’t doubt you, Josephine.” 

The tension in the room tightens, a knot tugged to breaking. He can feel her sudden rush of vexation as physically as a thumb pressed to the bob of his throat when she turns upon him. “You don’t _doubt me_?” she repeats, incredulous. “Then why demand evidence of me? Why put me through this exercise?”

“I—” he begins, and falters. 

“I thought so.” The sharpness of her gaze pins him in his seat. “I can accept you required… confirmation from me, Cullen. I gave it freely.” He watches a tremor run through her shoulders. She takes one slow breath and it vanishes, her countenance steadied. “But you may be suffering from the delusion that you are the only one between us who _needs._ ”

His heart rattles against his ribs as though she’d reached out and given him a good shaking by the gorget.

“I have told you what I need,” she says, speaking of the kind of borders and boundaries that make his head spin, “and you have brushed it away without trying.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” He rubs the back of his neck. 

She waves a hand. “Yes, yes. It’s not in your nature.” Her hand covers her eyes. “Inexperience is no excuse.” 

“I’m attempting to be honest with you,” he tells her, a lump wedged in his throat, “I’m trying--”

The word makes her eyebrows nearly graze her hairline. “A new definition of the word,” she mutters. “To _try_ is to demand proof of me, then run skittish when I presume to want anything in return.” 

His mouth shuts with an audible click of his teeth. 

She swallows and says, “You will not dare to give a single inch. What you require cannot be compromised, but because I know something of diplomacy, you will have miles and miles of me.” Her voice is quiet, all the words strained as they fall from her lips, as though they sting her throat on the journey out. 

“Maker, Josephine,” he mutters, and his head bows. In shame, if he is honest, his chin settling against his chest. 

What he has done comes to light in front of his eyes, clear as the flames flickering in the hearth. Silence lies between them. It is one thing to ask this of her; it is another altogether to decide he will not hear her own questions. To believe he is the only one bound by confusion or fear.

He doesn’t understand what she is asking, or why—that is abundantly clear. But what might have taken him a month to realize before only takes the span of moments now: there is much he doesn’t understand with Josephine, a distance that tenderness cannot breach. Only effort. 

He has done this before. The only kind of repetition Cullen can’t abide is mistakes. And here he sits, drilling himself out of the muscle memory he has built with her. 

His mouth is dry as parchment when he begins to speak. “Is there a limit,” he begins, “on how many times I can apologize in an hour, before it loses all meaning?” 

Josephine stills in front of him. “No.” She takes a moment to make her decision. “Not when you mean it truly.” 

He says, “I was thoughtless,” and looks up at her. Her eyes are tired, but she looks down at him with a judicious glance, listening. “You indulged me, and I—didn’t return the favor.” He takes a breath. “I know better.” 

A huff of a laugh takes him by surprise. “Oh, Cullen,” she murmurs, and an over-tired affection lines her voice that casts a glow over the room like candlelight. “It’s no new news to me.” 

His heart leaps into his throat. “Permit me to try again,” he says, “and I will be grateful.” 

She nods once. “Very well,” she says, a peace in her voice that wasn’t there before. A little change. “You may.” _Another day_ goes unspoken. They are both at wit’s end, tonight. Her arms are still folded tightly against her chest.

He wants to unfold them, draw her close to him, and find a way to bend all her sharp lines, to make right what he has done. “What’s wrong?” he asks, on instinct. 

She shakes her head, half-turns towards the fire. It takes her a moment to answer. “I am still troubled to think you didn’t know.” She purses her lips, reconsiders. “Or simply did not believe.” 

His answer is quick, a whirl of frustration at himself. “Doubt is a demon,” Cullen mutters, gripping the edge of the bench. “It visits me everyday, and that says entirely more of me than you.” He shakes his head with a hard jerk. “I shouldn’t have burdened with you with it at all.” 

A pause, and then a little movement as she leans forward, weight shifting onto the balls of her feet. And then, all at once: careful fingertips balanced at his jaw, tilting his head to the side. He moves without question into the soft lean of her hands. Her lips press against his hair—the scar adorning the side of his head. His eyes close, every nerve in his body aligned to that single touch. 

He reaches up, his gloved hand resting on hers where she cradles his head. She sighs, just once, a wistful tiredness he would take into his own body like an illness, just to spare her from it. He trembles once, and then steadies himself, so that she might lean upon him. She does, and rests her cheek against his hair. 

“Cullen,” she murmurs very quietly, the words lost against his hair and his skin, reverberating into the stone of his very skull, “if you cannot believe I nearly killed you in the courtyard for how foolishly you decided to spend your life for mine, or the armies I have brought to your door, or the hours I have spent at your side, or that empires have already shaken for you, then I have nothing to say.”

~~~

In the morning, at the war table, Trevelyan regards them all with a pinched look. There’s no mention Blackwall till the end, when Trevelyan fiddles with a map piece and announces that he left the Inquisition, and Leliana reveals what they already know—marched from Mosshome by Caradoc and his templars. 

“The problem is gone.” Trevelyan makes the assessment before any of them can say another word. “We move on to tougher climes, and actual problems. What is the report on Caer Bronach?”

He and Josephine part without speaking after the meeting. The night before weighs heavily on both of them, and he won’t risk it to speak until they have the space to try again. And he needs to lick his wounds, truth be told. 

_Miles and miles of me._ Cullen thinks even if lyrium plucked the words themselves from his brain, it couldn’t take the scar they’d etched in him. The emptiness in her voice. The disappointed weariness in her eyes. How well, in the span of an hour, Cullen can prove himself just as greedy with her time and patience as everyone else in Thedas. 

So he holes up in his office and dives into the work. He puts his troubles aside, as much as he can, and writes reports on their military maneuvers in the west, and leads the latest from Cassandra on the Emprise. 

A knock at his door. When he calls permission to enter, the Knight-Lieutenant ducks inside, shutting the door carefully behind him.

The surprise rivals the day before. It occurs to Cullen Arram hasn’t stood in his office for over a year. One of his fellows commands the small squad he rode in with on the fateful day over a year ago; Arram remains content to be the tree rooted to Trevelyan’s side, and nothing more.

“If I may, ser?” he asks, and Cullen motions him to approach the desk. He started growing a beard before the long haul in the Emprise; it suits the cut of his jaw. Thick and well-trimmed, the occasional sprout of grey. His hair, black as pitch and elegantly long, is bound up in its usual tidy knot. Dressed in archer’s leathers, his plate forgone for his time at Skyhold.

Cullen folds the letter he was writing into precise thirds for the envelope. “How may I serve, Knight-Lieutenant?”

Arram towers over him as he considers his answer. Cullen thinks of offering him a chair, but he can’t imagine it would help much. So he tilts his chin, sitting back in order to find his eye with minimal craning.

“I wanted to know—“ he pauses, then steadies himself with a breath. “How do you fare, after the Emprise?”

Cullen blinks. “How do I fare?”

“You were lyrium-sick.” Arram talks about it in a way that’s practiced, not casual. After all, they share a great deal, whether they make a habit of speaking of it or not. A shared history, even. Fallen circles. The sharp taste of acid, mint, ozone on the tongue, the warmth of the philter against lips. 

His instinct rails against him, cold plated fingers pressing against his throat. A threat—an old habit.

Cullen clears his throat. It’s not as hard as when he sat in this same spot and choked out a confession to Josephine. “I was,” he says evenly. “I’m fine.”

“Good to hear, ser.” That, at least, is earnest. “I assume you’ve heard of the infected?”

Cullen nods slowly. “I visited them myself. What of them?”

“Is there any chance they’ll live?” Arram asks. “One of my mates is among them.”

“Hector,” Cullen remembers, “with the great-axe.”

He nods.

“They’re in quarantine,” Cullen says by means of apology. He settles a little—he knows where this is leading, has stood in Arram’s boots many times before. He will want a way to see his comrade. He can understand that, even if it’s impossible. There will be no good answer to give, because it’s a matter of sending loss on its way. The trick of being a passable soldier—death never gets old, or easier, only more routine.

“Ser?”

Cullen shakes his head. “I don’t think so,” he tells him. “But the healer is easing their way. I talked with her this morning. No one suffers.” That had been clear. “And we’re working on how to slow the infection.” He meets his eyes. “You have my word on that.” 

Arram’s eyes dart down to his desk, mulling over a thought. Cullen waits, and then says, “Is that all?”

“One more thing,” he says slowly, eyes searching.

Cullen nods. In the next moment, he will wonder at his own stupidity, how he didn’t see the next statement coming. Arram launches it like a stone from a sling. Anyone with a brain could see it for miles, 

miles, miles.

Arram says, “I want to stop taking it.”

For days, all Cullen’s realizations found him late and slow: when this one hits, his office spins. Cullen concentrates on Arram’s face, on his own feet on his own office floor. The question, implicit and lingering, is impossible.

He stares openly, and Arram goes on, self-conscious in the silence. “You do alright,” he says awkwardly. “You do alright, and I—I’m not a man to be leashed.” He crosses his arms, his eyes finding a spot on Cullen’s desk. “I want to give up lyrium. I want it out.”

Cullen has no idea how to continue the conversation. “Why?” he asks, finally.

Arram shrugs. “I don’t want there to be places in the world I can’t go.” He adjusts one of his gauntlets. 

They shine in the pale sunlight from the window. He must polish them when he comes back home.

Cullen’s lips curl. “That doesn’t matter.”

Arram’s chin tilts up, curious. Annoyingly unperturbed.

“Then what does?”

“You need a better reason.” Cullen sets his jaw in a hard line. “The Maker’s will, or your pride will suffice. That answer—too easily solved. You can settle and still live.”

His nostrils flare. Not what he wants to hear. “Then my reasons are my own.”

“Did you fare poorly in the Emprise?”

“Not terribly,” says Arram, flat, “but I watched you.”

The world threatens to teeter and spin once more, but Cullen finds the challenge makes him sit straighter.

“I suppose your comrades were just as unaffected,” Cullen says.

“Not at all.” Arram flexes his fingers. “Hector started seeing demons that weren’t there. Another heard music. Some of us were alright. But he’s a dead man sleeping in a tent, and I’m here.”

“That’s just the way it happens, sometimes.” Cullen’s voice sounds far from his own ears.

“Why?” he asks, and his fist, covered in a leather gauntlet, creaks. Emotion thickens his brogue.“Nobody’s good against the red stuff. That’s clear. But we’re weak against it. Open wounds. Waiting for infection.”

“What did you see?” Cullen asks.

“I heard music.” His voice was gruff. “I heard the voices of the Chantry sisters from when I was a little boy. They were twisted up. Sharp. Wrong.”

He nods. “That’s the beginning.”

“Hector,” Arram says, “heard music. And then he started making wild swings at shadows. Didn’t sleep, didn’t eat—not that he couldn’t, mind you. He just—he said he didn’t need it, anymore. You ever see the bodies they burn on the side of the road after the pox’s been through a village?” Cullen nods. “They get fat with it. Pus and worms. It did that to Hector’s mind, his blood. He got scratched by one of the fast ones, the Red Templars with blades for hands. Cut him on the wrist, and he never had a chance.”

“It’s—“ Cullen begins, but Arram clenches his fist again.

“I want a chance,” he says, and his voice is bare as skin. “The world’s ending, whether she kills the Old God or not. It’ll be different, after. I’m not going into it like this.” He rubs at his arm.

It sits between them, before Cullen asks, “Why did you become a templar?”

He thinks of Josephine as he says it. Not of what she’d say, but only the way she looks when she sits across the desk from him, her head tilted just so in the candlelight, the meticulous press of her gaze. The way she listens. 

Arram shrugs. “Born an orphan somewhere in Starkhaven,” he says. “Given to the Chantry, like half the Order. They figured I’d be good for fighting. Ended up at Havard Hall, in Ostwick.”

“Trevelyan said you were a hunter.” A secret, passed when she thought he was dead. But it doesn’t matter now.

He looks visibly uneasy at the reminder—Cullen hasn’t take the time to notice how easily he shows everything on his sleeve. There’s no hiding anything. Or he just doesn’t care.

“Not always,” he says. “I worked in the tower. They lent me to the hunters when they raided the 

maleficar colonies.”

“Ah.” Cullen regards him. “Just maleficar.”

To Arram’s credit, he meets his eyes square on. “Just as you did, ser, I’m sure.” There’s no threat in his 

voice. “You’d know, I think, being stationed in Kirkwall.”

Silence again, as they sit with old scars. It’s not uncomfortable. They know who they are. At least, Arram seems to know. Cullen fades back and forth, depending on the day, and the dream. Some days are better than others.

Arram clears his throat. “I don’t have do that anymore.”

“No,” Cullen agrees. “Though it never loses its touch.”

“But that’s why you left.” He turns the argument with vehemence. “Isn’t it? I don’t—I don’t know why you did, but I can guess. It’s not your life anymore.” His eyes are sharp with confidence. “It had its claws in you. I heard about Kirkwall. I heard about Kinloch. Nothing there to make a man go to the knee in faith. I’d have run years before you did. But you wanted your own self.” He looks Cullen straight in the eye. “You weren’t a man to be leashed.”

Maker.

Cullen shrugs his shoulders. “Close enough,” he says.

Arram nods. “Old templars lose their memories, and the spurned ones crawl on their bellies through the streets. There has to be something else.” His eyes cast down to Cullen’s desk. “Must be.”

 _I hope so_ , Cullen thinks. _We are staking our lives on it._

Instead, he takes a breath, and asks, “What do you want?” He drums his fingers on the arm of his chair. “From me, specifically.” 

This, for the first time, makes Arram pause. “I need an—estimation, ser.”

“Of what?” Cullen narrows his eyes.

“Do you think I can make it, ser?”

It floats there. Cullen’s stomach twists.

“Do I—what?” he sputters, thrown miles off course.

“Do you think I can, ser?” Smaller, this time. “I don’t know anyone who’s done it, other than street beggars in Val Royeaux, who go off it because they haven’t the coin. That’s different. Nobody just gives it up.”

“I can’t make the choice for you,” Cullen bites out. “I won’t live with it. You will.”

“I’m not asking that.” His weight shifts from foot to foot. “How do I know if I can handle it?”

“You try,” Cullen says. “And you don’t stop.” He makes a noise. “I don’t matter in this equation, Knight-Lieutenant. I don’t.” 

“Someone must.” His thick brogue disguises the choppy upset beneath his tone, but his eyes glint with sudden sharpness.

“You’re enough for yourself.” Cullen shuffles papers on his desk, as though that will push Arram off. “If 

not, find Trevelyan. Ask her.”

“I did.” Arram’s answer rumbles out of his chest, solemn as a graveyard bell. “In Val Royeaux. We had a moment to breathe, and I told her.” 

Cullen ignores the trail of anxiety winding around his windpipe. He sighs. “And?”

“She said _you can’t_.” Arram glances down at the desk. “She said, _I thought I avoided this._ ”

~~~ 

Dusk rests on Skyhold’s shoulders. Dinner appears on his desk and grows cold. When night begins to settle, he abandons his office for the evening. He will keep his appointment. 

There is always the work. For Cullen, it’s a blessing. Reports to write, captains to berate, supply lines to reinforce. They occupy his attention for the day, even as the stones piling on his back increase in number, and while he will shoulder them until he falls, they approach weight he has never considered before. 

_I want to stop taking it._ Cullen did not tell anyone, when he decided. Eventually, Cassandra beat it out of him. Simple and clean. No dramatic reveal of how he could no longer call upon his full Templar capabilities. No discovery of the unused box of lyrium. Only that there was no hiding the way his muscles trembled after a practice bout. And then she shook him like a dog until it spilled out of him, drop by drop. She had done him well, with the promise of stepping in should he succumb to madness. 

(He wondered, briefly, if this was how she felt, hearing his story, sharing that burden. But Cassandra had undergone the kinds of trials only legends were privy to, and keeping an eye on his shakes and sanity perhaps paled in comparison to protecting a Divine, or riding a dragon, or continuing to endure Varric.

And she had wanted to know. Cullen, on the other hand.) 

_I want to stop taking it._ As though Cullen could provide instruction, like he did for the farmers’ children and pilgrims who decided they wanted to pick up shields and die for the chance to change the end of the world. As though there was a beginning, or would be an end. 

You are acting like you have a choice, Cullen thinks—to no one, to Arram, to himself. When you leave it, you must be out of choices. 

He should have said it. Ended it, so Arram would be inspired to find real support from someone substantial in his life. To try again with Trevelyan’s whose weariness from Val Royeaux finally made a logical amount of sense. Instead he swore to keep his mouth shut. And that was nothing but a promise for more in the future. 

But he will keep his appointment. He lumbers out of his office, down the may stone stairs and across the courtyard, where the surgeon’s fire glows brightly and the last of the merchants and shop-keeps put away their stands. 

It takes him no time at all to make his way to the path, and there waits Josephine, wrapped in her dark-green coat against the sharp chill of a Skyhold night. She looks up at the clear sky above, only turns when she hears the crunch of his boots through the snow. 

She reads his face, an eyebrow raising in concern. Can she see the afternoon’s conversation, even now? If she does, she says nothing. She looks down at her gloves, adjusts the buttons at the wrists. 

“Good evening,” she says, brisk. 

He nods his head. “Are you ready?” 

She is And they begin their way down the path. There will be ample soldiers at the bottom, waiting to accompany the Wardens to the pass, but their way down is empty. And empty of conversation. 

He thinks of all the ways he can to breach the silence. To ask about her day, or if the preparations went smoothly, or what Trevelyan thought of the plan. But all seem paper-thin, as though they wouldn’t hold up against the cold wind or the starlight. 

There are better things to mull. They have a thousand more things to speak of concerning their last conversation—at the base of one of the Frostbacks’ tallest mountains, perhaps. Fitting that they walk down its foothills. To say, _you want to divide us but I don’t know how, and it’s not something I think I can learn_. Or, _I didn’t mean to say you weren’t true—you are always true, that’s why I’m here._ Or just, _I will do whatever I must to make this last longer than the snowfall._

They have accomplished one small step in their last conversation— a step, perhaps, he could have ferreted out himself. But the quieter part of his soul disagrees. If they are to build it, it must be from the ground up. It must be from the smallest start, if they mean it to be steady. 

He is in the center of one of these tangents, trying to string words together like stitches in linen, when she turns away him from his side. It takes him a split second to notice, and then he turns on his heel. She has gone to the edge of the bend in the path and stopped, looking out over the valley. 

“Is something wrong?” he asks. 

She answers, voice thoughtful. “I’ve never seen it before, at night.” 

“Ah. The camps?” He takes a few strides up to stand on even footing with her. 

“Your wheel,” she says simply, gesturing to all that lies below. The little lights from a hundred hearth-fires glow in haphazard geometric lines. The winding paths, redone twice now to make room for more guests below. 

“It becomes harder to keep in line,” he tells her, “as you continue to fill the valley with armies. But it retains a little of its shape.” 

“I can still see all the pieces.” The quiet confidence in her voice touches him unexpectedly, like a hand curling around his wrist. 

It is silent, and then words spill out of his mouth without preamble, as though they’ve been lying in wait all night for a quiet moment. This kind of quiet moment—when he knows she is listening. 

“I’m not a negotiation.” His voice is rough, but not from the cold. “I can’t abide what’s between us made—business.” 

“Do you think I can?” She shakes her head. “That is not what I meant.” 

“Then tell me.” He looks out at the spokes of paths, remembers sketching them with a nib of charcoal in the middle of the field, trying to keep his fingers from freezing as he directed soldiers to dig. “Please.” 

He can hear her shift her weight in the snow, picture the purse of her lips as she decides her answer. It comes out a question—which he does not expect. “You do not worry?” she asks. “You do not look at this arrangement and think, _too much touches here_ —the Inquisition, your work, and your heart, all in one?”

 

“No,” Cullen admits. He almost says _I did not fall to pieces when Trevelyan remembered her love for Arram, and left me in the gardens_ , that would be a lie. But this is not new—duty, loyalty, and affection, all crowding inside the same space. Often enough, Cullen realizes with a jolt on his heart, that is perhaps the only way they _can_ grow.

“Not at _all?_ ” she asks again, voice rising at the end. She turns her head to look at him; he can see her dark hair in his periphery, the way the wind has tugged strands of her hair out of its coif. 

He takes a breath to gather his words, and settles for idiotic simplicity. “I have two hands,” Cullen mutters. “I only carry what I care for, and now I carry you. Life goes on.”

A pause. “That terrifies me,” Josephine says, with such bare honesty it stoppers the next bout of choking anxiety. “Not you. The thought of it all collapsing in on itself. Everything jostling together. The mess it inevitably becomes. I—” She makes a frustrated noise, out of words. 

“You have all the strings,” Cullen says.

“I have all the strings,” she repeats, a little faintly. But a thought ignites in her and she turns her gaze on him, jaw tight with feeling. “You are not a string I pull. What we have is not business.” 

The utter conviction with which she says it illuminates the exact fear she did not have the words to say. They are heavy enough speaking them aloud might trip an avalanche down the mountain. They both know them, standing there in the cold: _it could be._ It was, perhaps, when she acted on his behalf at Halamshiral. It happened to coincide with what the Inquisition might have planned, as far as he can tell. But if it hadn’t… 

A wonder, Cullen thinks, how he can see it pressing on her like the tip of a knife. And how easy it is to look at her, to know the answer, and say, “You wouldn’t.” 

She shakes her head mutely, too troubled to say anything else about it. The possibility still lingers there, over over their heads, just as the stars do, or the voices that crowd Cullen’s head with his certain unworthiness. They cannot be moved. 

Josephine looks away from him, down the path that extends beyond them into the valley below. “We will be late,” she says. “Come.”

He says her name, but she holds up a hand. “Come,” she says again, voice quiet and tired, and then he follows her down, because they have a duty to attend to. 

The camps bustle with soldiers, even at the late hour. A wrestling match echoes loudly from the other side of the valley—the presence of a few Avvar among the ranks means contests of strength in the snow are now repeated with structur by idle soldiers. As long as no one gets frostbite, most captains just consider it an extracurricular training exercise. The camp always smells of smoke, meat, and salt—and bodies, too. The strange, acrid odor of people living in close quarters. In number. In sweat. 

Cullen guides Josephine along the outskirts, to avoid anyone who might like his attention along the way. She follows, somehow, despite never paying attention to the path in front of her. Too much of the camp is still endearingly new. 

They pass the quiet cluster of tents that Cullen knows holds those battling the red lyrium—he will not dishonor their struggle with a word like _succumbing._ They are trying to survive, even if their bodies do not have the strength. 

He notices one of the tents is gone. Collapsed and folded away, with nothing else to hold within. The realization jolts him, a clawed hand squeezing at his innards. He was just here. He was just here _yesterday_ , and the journey is already over for more than one. 

“Cullen?” A voice in his ear, a hand gingerly pressed against his back. There is too much armor to feel its outline, but the weight is one he knows well. 

“Yes?” he asks, frozen and thawed all at once by the touch. 

“You stopped walking,” says Josephine, aware of the obvious. 

He realizes she is correct and immediately lurches forward on the path, briskly walking on. “Just distracted with I need to do,” he tells her, glancing over his shoulder. and the raise of her eyebrow demonstrates just how little she believes him. But they go on. 

Manon and a full squadron are ready and at attention when they finally arrive. She briefs them both immediately: the Wardens have already assembled and wait at the edge of camp to be guided to the pass. Scouts have already gone through. No surprises expected. But after the slog of finding them a place to go, Cullen will not risk a single chance. Half the squadron will watch their backs at the entrance; the other half will travel alongside the Wardens as guides. 

“Many of them came through in the beginning,” Manon says, “when you made the journey from Haven. Before I was even here.” 

“How insightful,” Josephine finds the compliment before Cullen can even reach for the praise. 

Manon shrugs, eyes finding the snow. “Most of them volunteered, milady. I can’t take all the credit.” 

There are two hundred and eleven Wardens ready to walk tonight, and none will stay behind, as well as over a hundred horses and twenty druffalo, bearing tents and supplies and an enormous quantity of wine (“I can’t tell if they’ve been saving it for this moment,” Manon admits, “or if this is just routine.”), a handful of stout, sharp-toothed mabari, and one rangy little cat, sitting upon a mustachioed Warden’s shoulder and surveying the entire affair with an incredibly bored eye. 

Just as Manon finishes her report, a voice carries across the air from within the fray, and a familiar iron-colored head rises above the rest. 

“Well.” Lysandre ducks around a team of massive black Starkhaven draught horses. “The two of you look like sour milk curdled in the tit.” 

It startles a laugh out of Cullen, raspy and low, despite himself. 

“The thought of you leaving us, Warden-Constable,” Josephine says wryly, “brings me low.” 

For a moment, Cullen thinks he may witness Lysandre smile—the corner of her mouth twitches unmistakably. A weight is missing from her shoulders already. They have not even left the Inquisition’s shadow, or even set foot on the path, but the promise of opportunity has done enough. Even for a veteran ragged and seasoned as she. 

The chance to start again. Cullen knows the feeling. 

“Regardless,” says Lysandre, “how kind of you to join us.” 

“This is purely ceremonial,” Josephine informs her, and then Lysandre does laugh. 

Short and sharp, but genuine. A voice not often accustomed to the exercise, the rusty grind of machinery and steel. Josephine looks just as surprised by it as Cullen feels, but Lysandre has already turned back to her Wardens, disappearing among the fold. They watch her disappear among the crowd. 

The bewildered look on her face does not fade, and Cullen tells her so. 

“I had never thought to hear her laugh _with_ me,” she says. Perhaps Lysandre would label the distinction semantic bullshit, but he can consider the feat a practical miracle all the same. 

When Manon reports the Wardens are ready, she whistles a long series of cues, and the Inquisition’s forces surge forward, half their number leading the charge at the front, and the rest mingling in the Warden ranks, their uniforms just visible every so often among the steel and the blue. 

The walk to the pass is not long, even with this many people. The Wardens are used to traveling with each other, even in a group this large, and they carry less than any fighting force Cullen has witnessed. But they have kept themselves alive for hundreds of years, Thedas’ oldest army, and even in this moment of loss and despair, they’ve always seemed to know what they were doing. 

And then, just like that, they reach the head of the pass. They stand against an outcropping of rock, and Manon gives another signal, and the Inquisition moves forward, in lines of six soldiers across, through the wide pass. 

“Wasn’t this smaller, when we walked through it?” Josephine asks from his side, quiet all this time. 

He nods. “We carved it out,” he tells her, a little obviously. “It was only four-across when we wandered up from Haven.” 

She makes a soft noise under her breath. “ _Wandered_ ,” she mutters. “Painfully accurate.”

“Incisive of you,” says Cullen, “to leave out that part of the story.” 

“Ha.” He is rewarded with an ungainly snort that makes him grin. For all Josephine’s weaving of the story in her office—the divine providence of Skyhold, unwinding the path for them to follow—a mage who had spent most of her life navigating a single building did not actually possess the skills to track a fresh path for a force three hundred strong through the mountains. 

“How many times did we almost head back the way we came?” he asks aloud, and Josephine covers her eyes with a hand. 

“Four,” she says. “I kept count, if only to keep me humble.” At the tilt of his head, she adds, “I would not have done better.” 

“You might’ve asked the mountains for direction,” Cullen tells her. “Offered them a stake in our trade routes as payment.” 

She adjusts her coat, as though she might wrap it tighter around herself. “I was cold enough by that point I would have resorted to any means necessary,” she admits. “That part of the story is still true enough for our charges to experience.” 

“Are you cold?” Cullen asks, automatically, and outstretches his arm. 

She hesitates, and his heart skips a beat, and then another. They are still in the midst of whatever poorly-worded mess he has dragged them into, their conversation on the precipice woefully inconclusive. He has forgotten, in the same way her presence makes him lose track of anything and everything. 

“You are covered in iron,” Josephine says. “You will not be warm at all.” And then she steps inside the circle of his arm, taking shelter against his side. 

It’s not very intimate—armor sees to that, and her furred coat, and he can scarcely feel her at all with the thick weight of his breastplate between them. His hand rests on her hip, and he feels her exhale, once, perhaps in relief. The wind howls once, cutting across the valley, and she leans into him, tugging her coat tightly around her. 

Wave after wave of Wardens set off through the pass, flanked by their animals, calling to their comrades in front of them, gesturing at those still waiting for their turn. The valley has filled with a resigned excitement. 

“Things end very quickly,” Cullen says aloud, as though it isn’t totally oblivious. 

But Josephine agrees with a little nod of her head. “All that planning,” she says, “for two days of movement.” She pauses. He feels her sigh again. “How strange it is to see them go.” 

Lysandre stays behind until the last wave of her people are ready to head through the pass. Josephine raises a hand to grab her attention, calling her name across the snow. She is too far to hear—Cullen releases Josephine and sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles, high and loud, and her head turns. 

“Warden-Constable,” Josephine calls out, and Lysandre departs from her forces, ducking around a pair of druffalo, bearing baskets large enough for a full-grown man to hide inside. 

“How can I serve?” she asks, voice somehow both acidic and jovial, rife with rank humor. This is who Lysandre is, Cullen realizes, unoccupied. “A last request, before I go?” 

Cullen assumes, naturally, that it is paperwork—something about the deed to Haven’s lands, or the lease, or some other bureaucratic bit of nonsense Lysandre will undoubtedly toss into the snow as she leaves the Inquisition’s grounds. Wise of Josephine to leave it to the last moment, honestly—there is no good time to trouble Lysandre about what must be done to satisfy the greater powers. 

But that doesn’t happen. 

Josephine rummages within her coat for a long moment, and produces, clutched in her gloved hand—a stone. A dirty grey and white chunk of limestone, just big enough to fill her palm. 

In a moment, the world wavers a little underneath his feet. Cullen stares. He knows precisely where that stone came from. 

She deposits it in Lysandre’s hand. 

The silence that passes is only a few breaths, but the tension in it could choke a man if he sat in it long enough. Josephine rubs her hands together in the cold; Lysandre stares at her in disbelief. Cullen waits, because that is what he does. 

“Ambassador,” Lysandre begins, voice dangerous with the tone of someone not to be mocked, especially not now, “why am I holding a rock? 

Josephine coughs once, twice behind her hand before she answers. “Because,” she says, “I am giving you somewhere in the estimation of twenty-four thousand pounds of it.” 

Lysandre slowly tilts her head, staring. 

Cullen’s heart wedges painfully, stupidly up into his throat. _I am a fool_ , he thinks, a mantra that will never leave him. It unfolds and unfolds, a roll of parchment tossed on a table. _What we have is not business._ It never has been. It takes this memory—that idiotic stone, his meager attempt to try for peace between them, that sets his course once more. It was that question ( _what now?_ ) echoing too loudly within his head. He has forgotten—how stalwart she has been, here at every moment, despite his blunt tongue and his unwillingness to listen. What he has forgotten: her strange and boundless patience. 

“It is not a gift,” Josephine continues. “Twelve tons of stone is too cumbersome and inconvenient to be labeled a gift by anyone sane. But now it is yours.” She clears her throat. “Goodbye, Warden-Constable. Build something immoveable, and make it last.” 

Lysandre stands there. Stunned, for the first time, and not by their incompetence. She considers the stone, and then the two of them, standing awkwardly in the snow. She does not take a knee, or bow her head and say thank you. She does not say anything. Instead, her hand curls into a fist, and she presses it across her chest, just once. A salute. 

And then she turns on her heel, stone still clutched in her hand, and follows the rest of her Wardens down the path. 

“You will not begrudge me finding a new home for your gift, I hope,” says Josephine. “I thought to follow your example.”

“Not at all.” His voice is low. “It was a rather pathetic example, after all.” 

“Surprising,” she says. Gently correcting. “Odd. It worked, did it not?” She raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m here, after all.” 

Cullen supposes they will talk at length about this in a moment—that he will apologize, and find better words to say what he means about his uncertainty for what lies ahead. But not her. That is what he lost, somewhere in the days, inside his own head. He has never been uncertain about Josephine.

Nothing would be possible, if he had. Certainly not the Wardens, gone from their sight, as whole a victory as can be. 

He doesn’t quite—think about it. Where they stand, or the cold outside, or the group of soldiers standing at attention as the last of the Wardens head through the pass. He lifts Josephine in one quick, short movement into the shadow of the stone. Before he can tip his head, her arms reach around his neck, and she pulls him close. For a moment, they are gloriously in tandem. To bend to her touch is the most natural thing he knows. He opens his mouth to say, _may I,_ and suddenly he is being kissed, her lips crushed against his in a pointed feat of strength and fervor. Their noses bump once, painfully, until he rights himself at the correct angle. He has to press his hand against the stone behind her to steady them both, lest she drag them down into the snow. As though we he would complain, or care. 

Josephine, he quickly learns, believes in kisses in bounty, the one resource without economic end. Her little plea, on those stairs up to the battlements, _just one more._ It makes his heart pulse, to remember it. He has no desire to deny her. Only to lean close, as her hand slides up into his hair, the tug of her gloved fingers sending little shivers down his scalp, his spine. This he can give, and give, and give. 

Despite her complaints of the cold earlier, she runs warm as a furnace, and his arm snakes around her back when the wind skirts across the valley to pull them closer together against its sharp bite. But Josephine is focused, unwilling to be distracted by such paltry obstacles. He loses count of where her mouth takes the measure of him, brushing against the corner of his mouth, the curve of his jaw. Once, to the crooked scar parting his lip. He memorizes the sound of her quick intake of breath between each one in eager metronome. When she bids him part his lips, he does so gracelessly, and despite this she kisses him as though tasting wine—delicately, slow and thoughtful, as though to waste any moment of it would be criminal. They are huddled together like nomads lost in the snow, and yet he knows distinctly, shivering in his boots, plied by her hands and her lips, that he is savored. Savored, for each sweet and bitter taste, for all that he is, and no less.

He holds her tightly, gripping a handful of her coat, when his fingers begin to tremble. 

When he pulls away, she makes a soft noise under her breath, as though frustrated by his human need to breathe. “I know what we have isn’t business,” he says blindly, not with the same accusation as before, but with the breathless air of discovery. “I knew it before. I didn’t say.” 

“What?” She blinks, incredulous. A conclusion she knew hours ago. 

“If this is what you need, then we will find a way.” His breath makes white puffs in the air between them. “You should—feel as I do.” 

A pause. Her head tilts to the side, waiting. He steps closer to her, hidden in the shadow of the stone, their noses nearly touching. “Free,” he says simply, roughly. “As yourself. I would be that for you.” He swallows, shakes his head. “It’s not a bargain.” 

A look of understanding washes over her face, a smile curling at the corner of her mouth, despite herself. “You’re mad, you know. You think I would bargain this?” she murmurs, shaking her head. She traces the corner of his mouth with her thumb, pressing against the small lines there. Her voice is warm and new, as though she has realized something once far away is not so out of reach. At least, in this moment. “Of all things— _this?_ ” And then she catches his bottom lip between hers, and he does not think any more, not for a long while. 

Like everything with them, nothing finds a suitable conclusion. The machinations of their world grind ceaselessly on, whether or not they pause in these small moments. But he must remember this. In days without succor, he must drop his head and drink. When there is no time, no faith, and no mercy, there must be a breath for Josephine. 

“If you would like it spelled out,” Josephine says, eventually, when he rests his chin at the divot of her shoulder, and she strokes her fingers across the nape of his neck, “I have no more answers about the future than you do. But I would like you in it.” Her breath tickles the shell of his ear, and her nose is cold against his cheek. He closes his eyes. “I know that is not enough. But will it suit for now?” 

Beyond them, someone whistles from far up the path. “Commander?” calls a voice, tentatively, the shaky tones of someone who has drawn the shortest straw. “Do you want us to hold, or should we return to camp, ser?” 

~~~

Of course, when they reach Skyhold again, Leliana waits at the top of the path, arms folded. 

“The Inquisitor is out of the Eluvian,” she informs them, eying where they join hands as they hike up the last leg of the path. Josephine had slipped her hand in his as soon as they began the march up, protesting of cold. 

“With Morrigan again?” Cullen asks, and she nods. Her face is pinched. Something is different. 

“Something’s happened.” Josephine’s brow furrows. 

Leliana gives one curt shake of her head, a motion that changes all the air of possibility between them.

“I don’t know,” she informs them. “But she’s back and she’s calling for us.” 

He hears Josephine take a breath beside him. 

Leliana beckons them, a flutter of gloved fingers. “You’ll need to come quickly,” she says. “She’s talking about _marching._ ”


	16. ally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the march south to the Arbor Wilds, Josephine finds herself embroiled in more than one plot. But she's far from alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to sunspeared for her unearthly beta talents, and to all of you for your patience. I am the absolute worst. (We passed the two year mark on this story in March... oh my god.)

It should be noted Josephine Montilyet never intends to end up in the Arbor Wilds. 

Trevelyan makes the initial announcement flat-voiced, arms folded across her chest, just as the three of them cross the threshold. She suspects if Cullen had not ushered her inside first, gloved fingertips brushing against her back, Trevelyan would have begun before she was even in the room. As it is, she delivers it before the door latches shut. “Corypheus musters all his forces to take an Elvhen ruin in the south. We mustn’t let him.”

Silence, then. Josephine dusts the remaining snowflakes from her coat, ignoring the jolt of her stomach dropping. She has been uneasy since Leliana muttered the word _marching_. It is no different from Adamant, and yet nothing is the same. The reasons why, varying from the logistical to the deeply personal, begin to tick themselves on a list running in the back of her brain. 

Leliana merely nods, makes a low _hmm_ sound. No surprise to her. Josephine suspects she has been keeping close vigil on the conversations between Trevelyan and Morrigan, their little visits into the mirror. 

Cullen stands at Josephine’s shoulder, an exact and appropriate distance for colleagues. An attempt, perhaps, to remember what she talked of down in the valley, despite the traitorous part of her always wishing him closer. She can hear his breath, drawing in and out, as he catches it. A few lit candles dot the table, and the sconces on the walls. The shadows flicker across his face. His hair, mussed from where she threaded her fingers through it. 

He is just as steady upon hearing the news as he was an hour ago. Cullen clears his throat and says, “Well then. I’ll get to work.” 

Admittedly, the conversation after that is somewhat of a blur to Josephine, as are the next few days. She takes down requests from Leliana and the Inquisitor—everyone on the continent must be notified. Monarchs must be alerted they will be marching through their lands. Way stations and supply lines must be maintained, especially now. 

To her dismay, she does not see Cullen for three days. Josephine refuses to believe she’s _anxious_ without his presence, but there’s nothing more she hates than feeling in the dark. She thinks of sending notes, and then of camping out in his office as she completes her work, until Varric tells her he has taken up sleeping down in the valley with his soldiers. There is no time to haul himself up and down the mountain in-between meetings and drills. Josephine’s reaction, or lack of one, reveals more than she intended. Varric immediately softens and opens his mouth—to comfort her, or an equally horrifying act—and she bustles away before he can say anything. 

Her role in the preparation lies in the eye of a hurricane. Provisioning over what they are meant to protect here at Skyhold. Ensuring the shelter they call home and headquarters will remain standing. A calm center, readying for the winds to drift south. 

And then everything changes. 

It begins with a summons to the war table on the fourth day. The cold, cloudy mountain has barely given way to morning when Josephine is the last to enter the council room. Leliana gives a few last instructions to a dwarven courier, presses a scroll wound tight with a bit of twine into his hand. He gives Josephine a nod as he passes—a long scar cuts across his eye and nose. Cullen and Trevelyan mutter at the head of the table, Cullen bent and arranging pieces with an oddly specific precision. 

A tightness in her chest, one she did not know she carried, gives way. Even though they stand here to plan a siege, a small and contented relief settles itself in her belly. 

At the sound of the door opening, Trevelyan blinks, and then turns, strides over to the window. “Let’s start,” she says. “We’ve no time to waste. Josephine has news.”

Josephine blinks once, and glances down to find a letter waiting in her usual place at the table. Addressed to _Lady Josephine Montilyet, of the Inquisition._ Still sealed. 

Leliana dismisses her courier. Cullen’s head jerks up as though pulled by a string. The way his eyes warm, instantly, upon seeing her—like brushing too close to a hearth. She expected to see him tired, run ragged day in and day out with the efforts of readying their forces. Instead, he is alight with energy. The dark circles under his eyes remain, yes, but his hands moved with such surety before, the calm and confident way he spoke to Trevelyan. She recognizes it for it’s simplicity: he’s in his element, here. A place she doesn’t get to witness often. 

Her mouth curves into the smallest of smiles, and color rises on his neck. But he doesn’t look away. Leliana passes her the letter opener, clearing her throat. 

“From the empress,” Trevelyan says with a nod. 

It’s blessedly short. 

“ _Against the will of my many advisors, the Council of Heralds, and the Marquis Briala,_ ” Josephine reads aloud. “ _I have decided to join my forces in the Arbor Wilds. If this is where history ends, or begins, the crown of Orlais must witness the turn_. _Please let_ _Inquisitor Trevelyan know I look forward to our reunion, and may the soldiers of Orlais prove themselves ever-worthy to rise against the tide of unspeakable darkness. The storm clouds gathering on the horizon cast us all in shadow. May the light of freedom burn just brightly enough to guide us down the path.”_

The battlefield is no place for Celene, thinks Josephine, just as Trevelyan catches her eye.

Her eyes are older. Josephine notices this first, before anything else. She will not pretend she is old—twenty-nine is nowhere near old, despite what her aunts say—but Trevelyan was only twenty-two when the Inquisition began. A young woman bearing a vast mantle, trembling a little when no one noticed. Gawky and awkward. No blessing to be born a mage, and yet Josephine is certain the life of a noblewoman could have ground her into dust. 

Not today. Josephine will make a study, one day, of how the promise of battle changes the ones leading it. Cullen, steady as rock and brimming with new life. Trevelyan, resigned with exhaustion. But the keen edge of readiness is sharp as a knife in both. 

“There will be no convincing her otherwise,” Josephine explains, unprompted. “If she has ignored Briala, then her decision is made. You will only need to brief her, Inquisitor. To acknowledge her as an ally.” She picks up her tablet, begins writing a note. “I will prepare you. It will be nothing, compared to Halamshiral.” 

Cullen turns a piece on the table, one that bears the head of the bright Orlesian sun. They dot the map like a field of flowers. “We will be using a considerable amount of her forces, Inquisitor,” he adds. “Nearly all of her chevaliers will ride, and we need them.” 

Silence. Trevelyan looks down at the massive map covering the table. Her eyes, worn like old rock in its vestige by the sea, search the pieces carefully. Divining an answer, perhaps. 

“No,” she finally says. “No. I can’t afford the distraction.” 

Josephine, though far from surprised, had rather hoped Trevelyan had evolved past this particular fear. “I know very little of battles, Inquisitor,” she says, “but you will have a lengthy march south, and more than enough time to see the empress without deterring from your duty. And it is—customary.” 

Trevelyan cocks her head sharply. “For what?” 

“She afforded us the gift of an army,” Josephine explains delicately. “We must extend the proper courtesies so she does not hesitate to do so again.” When there is silence, she clears her throat. “You decided to make her an ally, Inquisitor. It’s more than just words on a page. There is—follow-through.” 

“Follow-through,” mutters Trevelyan, “is hardly the same as _I will accompany you into battle in my blighted sedan chair._ ” 

The corner of Cullen’s mouth twitches. Josephine only just catches the flutter. She wants to feel the little motion under the pad of her thumb, pressed to the corner of his mouth. 

It has only been three days. There’s no excuse for this relief, an unbearably simple joy that comes just from being in the same room. But the silence has gone on a tad too long.

“Courtesy,” she repeats, for the benefit of more than one person in the room, and busies herself with the parchment as cover. “Think of the future, Inquisitor. You and all who represent your interests—the Inquisition’s interests—must at least allow her the chance to support us. She is doing just as we asked of her.” 

Whatever Josephine says inspires a thought in Trevelyan—she pages through a short stack of parchment on the table, squinting. 

Cullen makes a thoughtful sound from his corner, fingers playing with a piece. This one sports a dog’s maw, little teeth elegantly carved. “Will she bring a guard?” he inquires, eyes still on the map. “Or should I—”

“Of course,” she reassures him. “She has a retinue dedicated to her protection. I imagined it has been well-fortified since we came to the Winter Palace.” 

“Since the Inquisitor did what they could not,” he says wryly, “and saved their empress from assassination.” 

“Quite.” 

Leliana adds, “A few of Briala’s best have joined the royal guard since we made our mark.” She raises an eyebrow. “I know them. And the royal guard are proud. They would consider it rude to impose her protection upon us again.” 

“Besides,” Josephine continues, as afterthought, “Inquisitor, you spoke of salvaging Orlais—if Celene comes to the battlefield, the chevaliers will respect her for it. It may assist in their… mending.” She made a note on her tablet. “And they already admire you for your work in the Graves, the Plains, and the Emprise. This will serve well towards that end.” 

Trevelyan waves a hand. “Unnecessary,” she says, in a tone so dismissive it pauses the room. “We only need an adjustment.” 

Josephine will understand, later, that Leliana and Cullen realized what Trevelyan intended moments before she said it. It was the look that passed over their faces—a shadow from beyond the room, the razor-sharp response to threat. A hardness somewhere between ferocity and simple, implacable refusal. 

She would remember it as the look they exchanged standing over the body of the dead assassin in her office, how it changed their faces into shapes she could no longer recognize. 

“A change of plans,” Trevelyan says, scrawling a few words on the back of the parchment. She takes a breath. It is simple, once it falls from her mouth. “Josephine must come.” 

With those three words, the air in the room grows cold, and all her thoughts go quiet in disbelief. Not fear. 

Leliana speaks first. “Hardly necessary,” she says. Josephine recognizes the tone—carefully manufactured to disguise whatever bubbles beneath. “We need someone to remain here.” 

Trevelyan raises an eyebrow. “We all left Skyhold to go to Halamshiral. Vivienne was marvelous.” 

“You needed me for a task neither of them could do.” Josephine surprises herself with the sound of her own voice. “This is well within your means, Inquisitor.” 

“I’m marching south to face an Old God and his general.” Trevelyan doesn’t sound the least bit tired, now. Fire, lit somewhere within her. “I don’t have time to curtsey and assure her of her good deeds.” 

“I—” Josephine begins, but Trevelyan holds up a hand. Turns to her slowly, with utterly deliberate focus. 

“I have reclaimed land lost to the Red Templars,” she says. “Bled my way through the darkspawn, and bandits, and undead, and rifts tearing apart her country. I saved Her Majesty from certain death at the hands of Corypheus’ agents. Tell me what I owe her, Josephine. Tell me what I owe her, and I’ll be happy to do the work.” 

Only a moment of silence to prove her point, before she continues. “You understand her best,” she says. “And you are my ambassador. There is no better place for you to preserve the future.” 

“We agreed,” —oh, how careful Leliana’s voice is, how precise and sharp, breaking the moment in two— “one of us would always remain, in order to continue the work. In the face of catastrophe.” 

Trevelyan looks unfazed. “If we’re battling to save the world,” she says, “failure must be out of reach.” 

“The Conclave happened,” Leliana states, voice impenetrable as stone. It settles between them like a boulder rolled into place. “Nothing is out of reach anymore.” 

“Commander,” says Trevelyan, turning on her heel. “You’re in charge. Can we take the ambassador?” 

He has been so silent, ever since she said the words. When Josephine looks to Cullen, the only evidence of his temper is in how he grips the pommel of his sword. Tight enough the leather of his gloves might creak. 

“It is a battle,” he says, finally. “Everyone in it and near it is in danger.” 

Another casual flutter of her fingers. How much bloodshed has Trevelyan seen, Josephine wonders, that she can be so cavalier? “But the ambassador,” she repeats. 

Cullen swallows, musters his word. He is knotted up like thread, so tight a touch could snap whatever blisters within him. His face, his tone—courteous and professional, if not tense. But she can read it in the hollows of his voice, the carved look of his eyes. 

“The ambassador can decide well enough what she can and cannot do,” he says, and Josephine is—stunned, to hear him say it. “If you decree she goes, our forces will ensure she returns home.” 

That is all he can manage to say. Leliana makes a derisive noise under her breath. 

“And you, Josephine?” Trevelyan cocks her head. 

The sudden decision rattles Josephine, admittedly. An hour ago, she’d met with Gatsi, planning new projects they could begin with all the Inquisition’s forces gone and more space to work for a handful of weeks. And now in a matter of days—hours, even—she’ll head south with all the rest. 

But she’s not afraid. Bolstered by a hearty mix of ignorance and pride, perhaps, but she has no interest in playing the maiden in her high mountain fortress. “I traveled along the countryside with Inquisition forces when recruiting for our army,” she says. “I did not fear for myself then.” 

Both Leliana and Cullen tense, their heads turning nearly in unison. Neither make an effort to hide their admonishment—she reads it plainly. An improvised progress across the country is not a battle, is not the same.

She turns her focus to Trevelyan instead. Trevelyan, who looks at her expectantly, with those tired, determined eyes. “I will go wherever you need me to go.” 

Trevelyan plucks a map piece out of Skyhold—a golden eye, watching over the terrain, and slides it south. “Then it’s settled,” she says. 

~~~

She dismisses Cullen and Josephine after a more thorough discussion of supply lines and troop formations—Leliana has scouting reports for the south, a reconnaissance plan in need of finagling. The look in Leliana’s eyes promises words, and plenty of them, as soon as she can manage her way out of the room. Josephine returns her look with blankness. What did she expect her to do? Refuse the command? 

Cullen follows her silently as they exit, and shuts the great door behind them. His heavy gait echoes behind hers. 

She chooses to move first, to soften whatever blow is sure to come. “I appreciate you not speaking against me in front of the Inquisitor,” she says, “but I expect you feel quite differently. Am I wrong?” She cannot stop remembering when Trevelyan broke the news of the contract of her life, and how it crumbled all the good it made between them in but an hour. But he did not perform an _encore_ in the room _._ Instead he spoke confidently, with respect, no matter how tightly he gripped his sword. 

How something can be a surprise, and not a surprise at all, is beyond Josephine’s comprehension. 

No answer from Cullen. Just the sound of his boots. She adjusts the tablet in her hands. “Trevelyan could handle Celene, but she’s right. It’s better I do it, if this much is on the line. Taking too much of her time never ends well. And Trevelyan’s patience since Halamshiral has—withered. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

They are nearly at the end of the hall. “It’s not ideal, but nothing is.” She can hear him adjusting one of the metal greaves latched to his arm. His silence sets her on edge, and she sharpens her tongue. “I assume I would be safer here, but being chaperoned by an entire army is nothing to underestimate.” 

She strides ahead into her office—Cullen pauses at the threshold leading into the hallway towards the war room and pulls the door closed once more. 

Josephine drops her tablet on a nearby chair, her hands propped on her hips. “If you meant to shut me in here and rail at me for making decisions about my own life, Cullen, you can find the door,” she tells him tartly. “I know you remember where it is, and all the things you said to it once.” 

The words make the line of his shoulders twitch—a flinch, almost. But then he turns to face her, to breach the distance between them. His face is set in determination. The closest to unreadable Cullen ever gets. 

As he approaches, she narrows her gaze like a throwing knife. “I hope you have a second impassioned monologue ready, but I doubt you can surpass the first. Know that going in—” 

Whatever she meant to finish with disappears, when his hands slide to her waist and he kisses her without any preamble at all. A little sound of surprise escapes her lips, and she bends under the familiarity. There is no excuse for her to fold so quick, like a hand thrown away at a game of cards. It has only been three days, and Maker knows they have been separated for much, much longer. But his lips, rough as mortar, insist with a sudden heat she has no desire to turn away. 

Not that he would let her. He chases her mouth at every breath, as though she is air and he bobs beneath some murky surface. 

Her hands slide up over his chestplate, the smooth metal cold beneath her fingers—he moves the two of them back, with three careful steps, until the back of her legs touch her desk. His hand goes to the surface to balance them, an arm snaking around her waist. 

Josephine finally gets a word in edgewise, her tone rueful. “Do you expect this to divert my attentions?” she asks, ignoring the way she must catch her breath. 

He pulls away, face still so close their noses touch. “Just a temporary tactic,” he says tightly, “so I don’t say something I’ll regret.” 

She notices his eyes then—alight with frustration, just at the edge of anger. It is not directed at her. It is like watching a flame burn inside an oil lamp, held and contained. 

“What you said at the table—-” 

“I meant it.” She can feel that the words are true, no matter how they pain him—-a buzz beneath his skin he will not let her feel. Strong enough, perhaps, to hold it back. “I don’t decide where you go. I make sure you find your way there safely.” At her surprised look, he raises an eyebrow. “I try not to repeat every single mistake I make.” 

Well. 

“That is your official stance,” Josephine mutters, trying not to think of how his official stance is now bending her back over her own desk, and how even with responsibilities piled high as mountains outside her door, he could push more, and she would find it a relief. _Stop this_ , cautions the voice in the back of her head, throwing its hands in the air. _It has been three days, and this is not the end of what happened. Get yourself in line._

When he dips his head against the silence to seize her again, she stops him with a thumb against his lips. He is pressing down what does not wish to say, what he does not want her to know he feels. “And—you,” she asks, “as yourself?” 

His eyes flash. The hand on her desk tenses, as though it could leave marks in the wood. The strong arm still cradles her, inflexible as stone. She watches him search for words. His discontent is plain as the nose on his face. 

“The parchment she scribbled on,” Cullen finally says, voice low, every word measured. “Do you know what it is?”

She shakes her head. 

“The book she keeps.” He tilts his chin down to catch her eye. “Her records. Everyone’s names. Everyone’s—harms.” 

Ah. She’s read Trevelyan’s painstaking reports, multiple times, poured over her impossible tally of every malady against the army. Every campaign has its own tome, passed between each advisor as a sort of final account from the Inquisitor herself. But once they finish, they live on a shelf in Trevelyan’s private quarters, just above her desk, in a glass case. Locked with a key the size of Josephine’s thumb. 

Leliana’s idea, of all things. In those early days of the Inquisition, indecision crippled Trevelyan. The thought of putting anyone in harm’s way so she might survive haunted her, to the point where for a solid week the Inquisition did absolutely _nothing_ while Trevelyan grappled with her own anxiety. Apostates and rogue Templars tore apart the Hinterlands, the Chantry demanded a representative to journey to Val Royeaux, and a hundred other tasks piled up around their ears. She did nothing. A week of this, and then it stopped. Or—began, more like. 

She’d recounted the entire conversation for Josephine by hearthlight in Haven’s main hall. _What did you tell her?_ Josephine asked, pouring Leliana another half-cup of wine. _I thought we might wake up to find she’d run back to the Marches._

_I reminded her the cause was righteous_. She sipped thoughtfully. _I asked her if she believed in the Inquisition. The will of the Divine, the Maker’s hand in it all._

_And does she?_

Leliana nodded. 

_Then what was the issue?_ Josephine set her goblet down on the rough hewn table between them. 

_She believes, with every inch of her, that she’s meant to do this._ Josephine beckoned for her to go on. _She takes to it_ , Leliana said, very seriously, _like Andraste to the stake._

Josephine expected the very opposite: trepidation at the enormous task laid at her feet. Not a fear of how deeply she knew she might commit to the task before her. It has been years, and Josephine still does not quite understand. 

There had been some silence after that, before Leliana revealed she’d told Trevelyan to never forget what was given in her name. The books, heavy and dog-eared, written in a Chantry-taught perfect cursive, were born. 

She has read each one, of course, felt their heft grow in size and weight. They each read the copy after her ventures, passed between them as natural conclusion--Leliana and Cullen have added to the book, at times, if there are gaps in her knowledge. She’s read Leliana’s name, Varric’s, and countless more. Cullen’s name, and all that followed, when he ventured to the Emprise du Lion. 

Cullen says, simply, “Now the book holds your name. I watched her write it,” and closes his mouth. All his muscles tense as he bites his tongue down on whatever he wants to say next. It cushions her closer against him, her feet neatly tucked against his. 

“It’s only a book.” Her finger gently taps his chin. “It has no more power over my fate than one of Calla’s copies of _the Randy Dowager Quarterly._ ” 

He swallows one of his dry laughs, eyes dropping down at their feet. She tilts his head up with a little nudge of her finger. “It’s possibility,” he mutters. “You’re being marched right into harm’s way. I don’t like it.” 

“I’ll be fine,” she instructs sternly. “Surrounded by armies, and Leliana’s agents, and retinues from across the entirety of Thedas. There will be nothing next to my name besides _treated for boredom during the long ride south with no desk to write a letter on._ ”

His mouth twists. “Maker’s breath, Josephine,” he mutters, “it’s a battlefield, not a parade.” 

The back of her neck flushes hot. “I never said so,” she retorts. “I know precisely—”

His mouth covers hers instantly, warm and demanding in a way that makes her curl her fingers in the fabric of his surcoat. The tactic has changed—not to stop him from saying something he’ll regret, but to pause _her._ The realization makes her pull back, silence whatever sound rises in her throat when he catches her lower lip. “Don’t. She commanded me. You can hardly say otherwise.” 

He gives her a look, a cock of his head that says _please._ “You nearly tripped over yourself to say yes,” he says sharply. “I know thinking of her alone with Celene makes you nervous.” 

“Can you blame me?” 

“No.” His eyes flash again. “But it’s not worth dragging you across Thedas.” 

“I’ll be fine,” Josephine repeats, and the words make him cringe, and he dips his head to find her mouth again, to stop himself from whatever he wants to say. 

Exquisite, and yet intolerable. She pulls back, just out of reach. “Say what you mean.” 

He shakes his head, huffing a serrated breath of frustration. “Why?” he asks. “You know.” 

She does, but she will not allow him to get away without saying it. She tugs at the chestplate, as though to rattle him. His arm holds her tighter for a moment, and then releases her. He takes a step away, and even that feels too far. Her feet press to follow, but she holds still, and waits. 

He looks at her—a profoundly conflicted look, between anger and the need to go easy, this attempt to wrangle whatever it is inside him into something peaceable for her to hear. The sound of noise from the war room pushes him to action. Trevelyan and Leliana are coming through the hallway. 

“We will be the only things standing between Corypheus and the rest of the bloody world,” he mutters under his breath, soft enough she can barely hear it. “You should be—as far away as the ground will let you go.” 

She opens her mouth, and closes it. He nods to her once, terse and regretful, and then turns on his heel. He has gone through the door before the way opens to Trevelyan and Leliana; she is at her desk, paging through a letter, and reading none of the words. 

She thinks of how she felt when Trevelyan sent him into the Emprise. The forces that possessed her in writing her letters, the pain that reached from her fingers all the way into her heart. She did not get in his way, or demand take different action. 

The sting is—unchangeable, because it’s truth. One he cannot accept, and never will. He has not promised to convince her otherwise, or to turn her away from her plan. He has not berated her for not consulting him first, or anything of the like. For the first time, sitting behind her desk, Josephine marvels at how much can change in a handful of months. How he can walk away, singed with regret, and she can hold faith in whatever follows. 

No schism, no wide valley erecting itself between them, lost and forlorn on either side. Only an impasse, a natural stalemate. It does not gnaw at her like it did before. Instead, it sits heavily, in its own seat at the table. 

~~~

The march south proves to be unlike anything Josephine has ever experienced, even from the moment they leave.

Her first mistake is not sleeping the night before—armies take time to move, she thinks, and there are so many of them. The greatest battles, often late. So when Briony appears at her door several hours before dawn, she finds Josephine working by candlelight, sipping a cold mug of sludge-like coffee and working on a final letter to one of Dorian’s potential allies in Tevinter’s magisterium. 

Dressed in mail for the road, her great two-handed sword strapped to her back, she says, “I’ve already woken Madame Calla, my lady. I’ve men waiting to take your things down.” 

“So quickly?” Josephine raises an eyebrow. “I’m not quite finished.” 

She will give Briony credit for how she bows her head just once, and says, “Pardon, milady, but you don’t want to make us late for the war.” 

Before gathering all her winter roughage, she leaves a few letters for the ravens and a small packet of instructions for Gatsi. Calla waits at the stables, taking note of which wagons their things are being loaded into—Josephine has packed as lightly as she can allow, but there will be nowhere to stop for ink on the ride south, and her duties must still continue when she’s not at Celene’s beck and call. 

Cullen wrote her a note from below, brief as brief could be, in forewarning—

( _J—_

_Advice: pack light, or Ser Briony will convince you otherwise._

_—C)_

—but it still hadn’t prepared her for how Briony sized up her bags and said, plainly, “Choose one of the two, if you would, milady.” 

Josephine sets her brow and says, “I understand, but I will meet with the empress, and that requires are certain amount of—finesse.” 

Briony nods, and Josephine thinks, for half a second, _thank Andraste_ , and then Briony opens her mouth. “Choose, if you would,” she repeats. 

Josephine opens her mouth, and Briony diverts her eyes over her shoulder and says without pause, “Pardon me, but travel down there will be no more than two weeks, depending on how slow the Orlesians are, a week for the siege, and two weeks back. Probably less—the commander means for us to move as fast as we can. If we’re lucky, the summer won’t have dried up all the rivers down south and you can bathe, or wash your clothes.” How these things would happen, Briony does not elaborate. 

“She is the empress,” Josephine says again. “There’s a level of—decorum, she will expect.” 

“Milady, you will be wet and frozen, and then wet and sweating. No empress is immune to any of those things either.” Briony sets her gaze just over Josephine’s left shoulder. It’s a practiced look, for dealing directly with those who rank above her. 

“I need both,” she says firmly. 

“Very well. I’ll have one of the men bring up a cart for your horse.” 

Josephine blinks, and looks at her mare—a steady, sweet-tempered thing who has never borne anything heavier than Josephine on her back—and back at Briony, who obviously knows this. 

“That won’t be necessary,” Josephine says, without even a purse of her lips. “Just the gray one, please.” 

Josephine mounts up with the help of a stepping stool. Her brown and white speckled mount, a robust mare named... Speckle, at Dennet’s insistence, even as Josephine pleaded for something a little more dignified, is perfectly still until she situates herself. She gets herself upright just in time to see Briony assisting Calla. Calla, who went to great pains to hide her disdain at being made to ride south, practically glows when Briony gives her a hand up, tucks her dust robe against her legs with a brief touch. Her unexpected smile makes all the signs of morning exhaustion disappear from her face, if only for a moment. 

But now Briony is speaking. “You’ll be with the Fourth Company,” she says. “Mine. Fereldans, mostly. Some you might have met on your campaign.” 

Josephine does remember them, though not as vividly as she might a year ago. The volunteers from King Alistair’s royal guard were particularly memorable, jovial warriors who combed through every holding they stopped at on their ride to recruit, looking for good ale and anything that needed repairs. She remembered finding one of their pikewomen atop a roof, thatching a hole in her shirtsleeves in the middle of the night. She’d been rewarded with a jug of some extremely sour-smelling liquor in return, and had spent the rest of the trip with it dangling from her hip like a bell. 

“Do we always leave so early?” she asked absently, rubbing flecks of sleep from her eyes. 

“One of the commander’s passions is punctuality,” Briony answers, and Josephine can just hear the dry lining beneath her voice. Calla hides a titter in her sleeve, and then beckons her over near the path. A sound creeps up from the valley. They will ride down to join the lines soon, but for now—

The great wheel unwinds below. Slow as one of those great jungle snakes Josephine has seen displayed in the courts of Antiva’s merchant princes, but every inch of those strange reptilian beasts was muscle, and their troops move with the same calculated intent. They’re too far away for her to pinpoint which spokes lead and which follow, though she can see their siege machines lie far off, cold and unmoving. As units move in their steady lines, the fires that usually dot the valley below, bright as candle-flame, dim and disappear one by one. 

“No trebuchets?” she asks, to no one in particular. 

“It’s the jungle, milady.” Briony checks to make sure her saddle is tight enough; Speckle snorts. “Unless we’re planning on obliterating the temple, those won’t do anything but slow us to a crawl.” 

Before they head out, Calla hands her a few letters, bound together in twine, from her horse. “Last correspondence from this morning,” she says. They will have little of it until they camp again in one place for the battle itself. The thought makes her hold back a despairing sigh. Two missives from Rivain, one from Kirkwall, and the last is a letter from Laurien. She unceremoniously shoves it to the bottom of one of her saddlebags, and forgets it after the morning passes. 

She can only describe the next few days as _a slog_ , a word she has never experienced in its fullest definition. Not even Haven could eclipse this. Of course, Josephine marched from their old home like everyone else. She remembered the knee-deep snow, the howling wind over her heads, and the cries of the wounded and the dying. But there was so much happening at every moment, the hours evaporated. Leliana was at her side for every turn of it. And if she was out scouting, or trying to solve some crisis, there was Cullen, or the Inquisitor herself, once she arose from her snowy grave. And then they were moving forward, led by Trevelyan and Solas and their own hunger. 

But Skyhold waited at the end of it, and that was a beginning, not an end. And Leliana rode south days ago to help scout a safe passage for their armies and to help her agents prepare. 

The march to the Arbor Wilds sets a fast pace for everyone else, and a grueling pace for Josephine. Her campaign to bring back soldiers was decidedly slower—they had not dawdled, kept good time, but it was nothing compared to this. She did not sleep on the ground. She had been welcomed, as an emissary of the Inquisition, at every arling and holding they stopped at, and even if they could not provide soldiers, they provided bed, shelter, food. And then they rose early and were off once more. It had been steady. They had returned to Skyhold just as they needed to, and with a full force to crush Adamant. 

They wake hours before the sun rises, break camp, load everything on wagons, horses, or onto their backs, and then go forward. Josephine’s no stranger to long days and short nights, but sitting in the saddle for hours on end is not only hard on her body, but insufferably boring—her own prophecy coming true. 

The soldiers of Briony’s unit are courteous, and spend a great deal of time singing. For the first day, it provides a pleasant backdrop. Their conversation weaves constantly constant around her. The soldiers are polite, even sweet. They respond to her attempts at conversation, but she can see they’d much rather talk with their fellows rather than entertain some noblewoman on her speckled horse, so after awhile she lets them be. To be fair, there’s little to talk about. 

But it’s Briony who tends to Josephine and always keeps her in her sights, who strings up her tent and saddles her horse, gives her a onceover in the morning with a raised eyebrow, as though she half-expects Josephine will fall to pieces. But she doesn’t—not even close—and the look in her eyes satisfies Briony. 

Calla tries her best, often demonstrating her impeccable memory and focus. As much as being surrounded by other ears will allow, they keep track of what business is most urgent for Josephine to attend to once they stop for the evening. Reading letters is more than possible on horseback, though ravens and messengers finding them means they’re few and far between.

And then there’s the two of them together. Maker. They’re scarcely parted—always angled in the marching lineup so Josephine’s never far from either of them, but attached by the hip. The saddle? Josephine’s lost the metaphor. But they talk, and talk, and talk. As though they’ve forgotten she’s there, as though being on horseback and near each other has erected walls with the illusion of privacy. To be fair, it’s Calla who talks most, but Briony hangs on every word. 

It makes her wonder how much time they really spent together when Briony guarded Josephine’s office, and what’s changed since the issue of the contract on her life was solved. 

In her days of deepest boredom at court, Josephine learned to listen to the idle conversations about her and catalogue every inch of them as though they held the keys to unraveling every dynasty in Thedas. It worked, sometimes, and Briony and Calla are already interesting. She makes a list that grows longer with each day: 

—Cassandra will call upon Briony to duel and practice when Cullen’s busy, and the Seeker once succeeded in sweeping her legs out from under her in such a way that she flipped backwards and landed on her knees. The phrase “arse over teakettle,” in Briony’s deep, steady Fereldan accent, has never been more amusing. 

—After an entire half day of wheedling and investigation, Calla discovers Briony’s favorite dish is _barigoule_ , fennel and string beans and onions cooked in lemon and—vanilla. The hesitation of the confession comes from the dish’s ostentatious Orlesian heritage, and getting her to admit it is like pulling teeth. When Briony demands Calla answer the same, her all-too-casual response of just “oh, a buttered roll” startles Josephine, and several of the surrounding eavesdroppers, into laughter.

—Calla embroiders to calm herself when the world ties her in knots (a direct quote, a pun to earn a groan from Briony and then a squeal, as though from a pinch to the soft skin above her knee through her skirts)

—Briony has dueled twelve times in the name of the chantry, three times for the Inquisition, and once for herself. She won’t divulge the offense, only that she nearly lost her arm doing it. 

—Calla makes reference to a love for dice and cards in the past, and shunts it aside so quickly Josephine instantly knows it was a problem, the kind to rack up debt and enough shame to send someone back to the family business, and then all the way to the Inquisition. Briony’s quiet is thoughtful, almost soothing. All she says is, “I know what it’s like, you know. To taste something, and to keep needing it.” They don’t speak much for the rest of the afternoon. 

—Briony had her first “roll in the hay” at Wintersend, just before her training at Denerim’s chantry, to some lovely tavern maid who took pity on her tongue-tied nonsense. Calla laughs and then the following silence indicates a blush so deep as to rival the sun.

—Calla prefers wine-red as a color; Briony, blue. (“But what kind of blue?” “ _Blue._ ”) 

The flirting’s sweet, and passes the time, even when it sends her into bouts of wool-gathering about long hours spent in a certain office before Halamshiral, endless meetings on Wardens and work that deviated gently from business until they became something else entirely. 

In strange magic, the days pass with speed, but each hour drags on. She cannot even relieve herself alone. Over and over, Briony says, in an even-tempered voice, calm as a cloudy sky, “If you show me you’ve got a knife in your pocket in case something sneaks up on you, we’ll have a different conversation,” and then follows her out into the woods at a safe distance. Josephine quickly accustoms herself to the habit of waiting until latrines are dug in the evening. 

On the third day, Varric ambles up beside her, riding a dapple-grey pony. He looks her up and down before grinning. 

“This is great,” he says. “You look so human, covered in dirt.” 

Josephine wrinkles her nose. “Please don’t make it worse. I don’t know why this always happens.” 

“’Cause you ride in-between everybody.” He glances around them. “Can’t ride on the edge of the line if you don’t have a weapon. You’re the ham in the middle of the biscuit.” 

She chokes, and his gruff laugh fills the air as he leans over to one of his saddlebags, rummaging through until he plucks out a rough linen shirt. “Here.” He tosses it across, and lands in her lap. “For your face.” 

“I can’t use your _shirt_.” 

“Only the best for the ambassador,” he informs her, very seriously. “And I wore it yesterday, so don’t rub your face in the pits.” 

A barely swallowed chuckle from behind her—Calla, the traitor. Josephine uses the cuff of the sleeve to wipe the dirt away, from her eyebrows to the lines around her nose. 

His appearance is a little too convenient to be totally devoid of suspicion. “Did the Inquisitor send you back here to watch me, or the commander?” She keeps all the reproach out of her voice, though being watched like a child rakes at her nerves. Briony and a dozen good soldiers surround her, not counting the units who follow and lead. She doubts Trevelyan has given another thought about it since deciding to drag her in tow, but Cullen—the man who lined her pathway with guards so she could step out of Skyhold without him—will be leveraging his resources. 

“Oh ho,” he says. “Do I hear a little disagreement?” 

“I’m surrounded by soldiers. I hardly need more.”

“Ruffles,” he scolds, gently. His voice is kind. “I heard one of the guards saying his brother was clerking for Vivienne back at Skyhold, and drew my own conclusions.” He touches his own cheek with a finger; she rubs at her own with a clean bit of shirt and dried mud flakes off. “Had to tell Commander Curly I was breaking ranks to come back here, though. He seemed miffed he hadn’t thought of it himself.” 

It is a very dangerous question to ask someone who lives only on a steady diet of hard cheese, gossip, and ale, but she rubs behind her ear and asks, “How is he?” 

Predictably, he raises his eyebrows, but says, “He’s good. We should let him outside more often. He wilts like fresh-plucked Andraste’s Grace behind that big desk.” 

Rolling her eyes is entirely necessary. “I certainly don’t have time to keep tabs on his schedule.” Her nails are a lost cause, even when she wears gloves. “He seems—invigorated. Immune to tiredness.” 

“Well, yeah,” Varric laughs. “So were you, at Halamshiral, spinning everyone like tops.” 

“A different sort of battle.” 

He gives a hum of agreement, as if to say, _and just as important._ “This is what he does,” He adjusts himself in the saddle. “At Adamant, I heard he popped that fortress open like a cork from a bottle of wine. It’ll be interesting to see what he does to a jungle.”

The casualness reminds her of Trevelyan, fluttering her fingers in the war room. Varric speaks of it like watching a wrestling match, the detached air of a spectator. Josephine says as much, and he shrugs. “You could walk the whole line, Ruffles, every mile of it, and you’re not gonna find a single person wailing about what’s going on. Least of all me.” 

“Some of them will be hurt, or worse.” 

“Not as bad as they could be with somebody else at the helm.” The underlying flatness in Varric’s tone speaks to personal experience, a shade closer to the actual truth than he tends to allow. “I think they’re all relieved, to be honest with you.” 

She thinks on it, and nods. “This is what they’ve been waiting for.” 

“You got it.” He wags a finger. “All the practice, all the drills, all the—everything. It’s finally time. They get their shot at the nasty piece of shit that burned their world down.” 

They sit with the thought as their horses trod onward. 

“Anyway, Curly’s going to burn like a cooked fish when we get to the Arbor Wilds,” Varric says in a satisfied voice. “Muggy jungle sun. Keep your eyes peeled.” 

She smothers her chuckle behind the shirt before folding it neatly in her lap. 

“So who’d you piss off to get sent down here?” Varric asks as she hands his shirt back. 

_Who indeed._ “Celene’s joining us. Unless you’d like to put on your finest and attend her—” 

He snorts. “Please,” he says. “She’d probably try to use me as a footstool. She’s all yours.” 

“It’s a long march south,” Josephine muses aloud. “You could regale her with your tales. She’s an avid reader. I imagine she’d love to hear about _Tales of the Champion._ She can make herself busy, but it might be a nice gesture.” 

“Nah. It’d be an insult at best.” 

“Varric,” she admonishes, surprised. “Surely you don’t need me to stroke your ego.” 

He laughs. “Ruffles, have you ever read the smut they churn out in Orlais?” She nods, because—of course she has. Everyone has. “It makes my stuff look like hand-knitted doilies. Send me in there and you’ll create a national incident. Trust me on this one.” 

“Very well,” she says. “Although I think you’re being dramatic. Don’t you want to be alone with the most powerful woman in the south?” 

“If I stay in there with her too long, I’ll probably end up throwing her in a story, and then where’ll we be?” he says, with a wide, toothy grin. “Besides, I’m already riding next to you. That’s close enough.” 

~~~

Another two days and Orlais joins them. Chevaliers on their proud horses, gold, white, and blue ribbons braided into their manes. War is an affair in Orlais, just another manifestation of the game, and appearance is as key now as it is when stepping out onto the dance floor. 

When they stop mid-afternoon to coalesce the two forces, and soldiers are busy building fires and setting up tents, or tending to their weapons under the late-afternoon sun, a runner finds Josephine, voice breathless. “The Empress requests you this evening,” she says. “Forgive me. It took forever to find you.” 

Of course, Josephine sends her agreement back. 

Celene’s tent, done in sky-blue silk and emblazoned with a white lion’s head, sits at off-center in the camp of the Orlesian forces. Walking into the camp is not so dramatic as entering a different world, but straightforward paths through it are non-existent, and even finding Celene is a chore. Their commander has prescribed a _lay your head wherever there’s room_ methodology, with patrols keeping watch at the perimeter of the camp. 

It works, she supposes, although she finds the way the Inquisition winds itself in perfect ratio, like a spiral, to have more forethought. An example to others, perhaps. 

The only trouble is with the arrival of the Orlesians, they’re well out of the mountains, and the cold snaps. Almost overnight, the humid air has become stifling, a reminder of summer in other, less dreary parts of the world, and Josephine’s Skyhold attire is now totally unfeasible. 

Calla helps her comb through her hair, makes sure her braided coif is impeccable—the silver lining of not bathing is how soft and manageable her hair has become, twisting up into her coif without a single hair out of place. She’s eschewed her traveling clothes for a muslin gown dyed a very delicate blue-grey, the color of Antiva Bay’s rocking waves on a cloudy spring morning. The neck is higher than she’d like on such a sweltering day, but waist and hem are beaded with little swirls of jet, which makes it a little less—disgraceful. Never in her career has she appeared to the empress in _muslin_ , a material better suited to some Fereldan frontierswoman dressing up for her first Satinalia. But war is sacrifice. 

All dirt from her face and neck has been wiped away, and when she arrives, the guard does not even ask who she is before pausing her at the flap and ducking inside. Perhaps she’s not so unrecognizable after all. 

Celene’s spacious tent holds only the bare necessities, but their opulence shines. The goose-down pallet is supported on a collapsible frame of mahogany, and the silver pitcher of water on the table in the center of the room sweats, little droplets sliding down to the surface. There are cups, ready to be filled. A large chest glimmers with gold leaf at the edges. And Celene herself, radiant, is swathed in deep violet traveling garb—a long skirt with careful slits up the sides, pearl buttons, lambskin gloves. 

When she turns to face Josephine, not an inch of dirt can be spotted, even on her leather shoes. Her skirts whisper, catching the draft in the tent. How can an empress wear velvet when the world sweats to death around them? The answer is simple: power. In the heart of one of Orlais’ worst winters, Celene wore a rapturous chiffon gown the exact color of the ice outside—blue so pale it was nearly translucent—-baring her neck, her arms, and the white expanse of her chest. She conducted business out in the garden with it for an entire day until some bitter noble from the Western Approach arrived. He had been so impressed the business took half a day instead of a week. Celene had the gown spelled to radiate heat. 

It is one of those stories Cullen will never believe, and the thought makes her press down a smile. 

She has gone to great lengths to appear perfect for Josephine. And when her steel-grey eyes meet her gaze, she knows precisely why—no trace of warmth can be found there. The lines around her eyes hold steadfast, impenetrable. At Halamshiral, she could see the ghost of a smile her in visage, the hidden amusement two acquaintances naturally share. It is gone. 

Josephine curtsies, and makes herself ready. “Your Majesty,” she says. “How I wish we could meet under better circumstances.” 

“Not at all.” Celene slides to the table and sits. “It is a glorious thing, to defend one’s country from harm. Join us, Ambassador.” 

“I would be honored.” No servants sit at attention inside the tent, so Josephine reaches for the pitcher, and pours cups of water for them both before she sits. Celene raises her silver cup, and Josephine follows her lead. “To victory, then?” 

“Absolutely.” Celene tilts her head, just so. “Victory, and unity.” 

They drink. When they sit their cups back down, there is no more time for pleasantries. Celene prefers things quick, sharp, and to the point. Josephine knows this, and knows it well. But even she is not prepared for what comes from the empress first. 

“Your campaign to make the Inquisition’s seneschal our next Divine,” Celene says lightly, and it falls like a sword blow. “I had hoped you might explain your reasoning.” 

“Sister Nightingale is renowned across Thedas.” Josephine smiles, as though recalling a pleasant memory. She’s been ready for this, although not from Celene, for some time. “A veteran of the Blight, a companion to the Hero of Ferelden and friend of its king, a Chantry sister, and well-versed in the Game. Not to mention Divine Justinia’s Left Hand. I cannot imagine a better-suited candidate.” 

Celene folds her hands in her lap and says, “The power of imagination is in its flexibility. Consider the Right Hand.” 

“Lady Cassandra has been instrumental in the efforts of the Inquisition,” she agrees. “She would be suited to the task of Divine. But she is a hero, known for her steel, and will continue that life long after the Inquisition ends.” 

Celene slides a hand into her pocket and produces a fan. “The people love her, do they not?” 

“They do.” She watches the fan open with a gentle hitch of the wrist, the ivory-and-pearl handle a near match to Celene’s hands. The fan itself is fashioned to look like dove’s wings, cream and soft blue and grey, so that when she flicks it back and forth it simulates flight. 

“My clerks hear the intercessions of the people, Ambassador, and do you know what they hear most often?” Flap, flap, flap. 

“Fear, I imagine.” It has been many years since Josephine was on the receiving end of one of Celene’s fan dances—this exaggerated avatar of boredom, meant to dazzle with one hand and disembowel with the other. She searches her face. The empress leads on and on towards something, but Josephine doesn’t know quite what, no matter how she racks her brain. All the rumors, all the reports out of Val Royeaux, the Winter Palace—nothing. 

Celene gives a slow nod of acknowledgement, and then pauses, her wrist going still. The crinkled edge of the fan nearly grazes her chin. “Grief,” she reveals, voice quiet and just stately enough to make an impression. 

She waits for her to go on, and she does, after the pause is long enough to be dramatic. “The people have been thrust into panic for years. Crisis after crisis—the mage-templar war, the Conclave, the Breach, Corypheus—no one in the south has known if they will last the year for the past half a decade.” 

Josephine thinks, then, of the unflappable soldiers she has marched beside for the past few days. She thinks of Cullen’s tireless energy at the war table. Their energy aimed, at last, towards a solid enemy. _Relief_ , Varric had called it. 

“The threats disappear, one by one.” The little breezes of the fan motions make the single hair out of place flutter. Josephine just catches it in the afternoon light, pale and lamb-soft. “Perhaps the one awaiting us in the jungle will remain another addition to our never-ending list of horrors.” She pauses. “However.” 

Is she searching for the soft spots of Josephine’s heart? She can’t be. Celene knows Josephine’s empathy as a strength, not a weakness, and knows appeals like these can’t work. Not when she’s been working in a mountain fortress for nearly three years, watching the wounded come and go, having fled from burning Haven on foot. Not when the Inquisition bears all the blood and force in the south to save Thedas from Red Templars and Corypheus. _What’s your game?_ she asks silently. 

And Celene goes on. “So much has been lost—balance, at least, should be preserved. Someone who can unify them in the Maker’s light once more. Lady Cassandra is more than capable, and what’s more—she’s loved.” She raises an eyebrow just so. “The people yearn to recover what once was. Prosperity, faith, love for our brothers. They are attainable again. With Lady Cassandra leading them, they will know it for certain.” 

More than capable. Josephine hears, _I can manage her._ Cassandra is not one to be manipulated, but her experience in cultivating with the nobles of Orlais is decidedly less than Vivienne or Leliana. It will take a learning curve—a clean opportunity for Celene to become invaluable, or prove her worthiness as an ally. Vivienne can be reasoned with, but Celene will never advocate for a mage to sit on the Sunburst Throne. It leaves Cassandra. A problem still, but realistic. If there was to be an uncommon choice, let it be Cassandra and her good heart, which is strongest when pointed in the direction of righteousness. 

“You’re right, Your Majesty,” says Josephine, once it’s clear Celene has finished. “Balance begets peace, does it not?” Is that the barest shadow of a smile on those rouged lips? “Lady Cassandra loves nothing more than justice. Her quest to balance those scales would never end.” 

“Precisely.” 

“Yet,” she continues, tiptoeing along the knife’s blade, “But I’m loath to let history repeat. The people have suffered too much to have respite for another decade, only to be thrown again into the dust.” 

Silence. The humidity makes Josephine’s hair frizz—she can feel where the littlest strands have sprung free from her coif, despite Calla’s efforts. Beads of sweat drip down the back of her neck. But the atmosphere in the tent has chilled considerably. 

She takes a breath, and finishes. “If balance is your aim, you’ll have it with Lady Cassandra. But if you want change, and a new better, way for Orlais—-well. Sister Leliana means to give us new scales altogether.” 

It has been a long time since they sat at the same table, longer still since they debated. Josephine resigns herself to what she’s known since she’s entered the tent—Celene does not greet her as an old friend, a former colleague, or even a business associate. These roles change, and change, and change. It’s naive to expect otherwise. But today, at this table, Josephine is an adversary, and she does not like it. Not one iota. 

“I suppose I’m not surprised,” Celene says, just before the pause becomes awkward. “ _La Colombe_ was always a little more radical than her fellows. It’s good to see the years haven’t dampened it.” 

She does not say _Briala will be pleased to know._ It strikes Josephine perhaps this meeting is in total secret, even from her marquis. Surely Briala will no doubt know within a day or two that her empress has made her own play for the Divine. Against her wishes, most likely. 

It has not been long at all since Halamshiral, and the fact the two of them are already playing against each other, out of tandem, worries Josephine. 

But she smiles. “Once a pin, always a pin, Your Majesty.” 

“A golden one,” she replies, “and sharp.” A little smile, unreadable, before she continues. “One more order of business, and then I’ll release you, I promise.” 

“Of course. Please do.” 

“Your Warden, who sits in my cells,” says Celene, taking a sip of water. “I assume you know?” 

It takes every inch of practice, every moment of training of Josephine’s diplomatic career to keep her countenance still and even, to make her voice as strong as it can be, against this reveal. Rivals have tossed both water and wine in Josephine’s face. But the sting rises, immediate and fresh, on her cheeks like a slap. 

She did not know. And Celene herself knows thoroughly Josephine had no idea. 

In retrospect, the play in the game is an easy one. Celene’s always had good timing, and she saw a gap, played directly into her advantage. The wretched timing of his disappearance, just as they needed to march. He only would have been tried in Val Royeaux a day or two ago. Perhaps three. Just long enough for Celene to slip his pardon into her pocket and to saddle up her glorious chestnut stallion, black bridle embroidered with sapphire gems at the forelock, mouth, and nose, and ride out to meet the allies responsible for saving her country. 

To threaten them, yes, into stepping back, and conceding her ownership. Her understood power. 

“Warden Blackwall,” Josephine repeats. “In your cells? I had heard he escorted some imperial imposters back to your court. We thought he might join us later.” 

“His name is something else.” Celene gives a little shrug— _it’s below me to remember._ “I’ll have one of my clerks deliver a copy of the pardon of transfer to your tent. I believe we have his confession.” Of course they do. “He’s a bandit. Murdered a family years ago, and crafted a new identity to evade authorities.” Her tone, parchment-dry and bored, slides beneath Josephine’s skin like a needle. How simple it would’ve been, to have one of her aides deliver a full report to her tent just as they arrived. But she’s chosen this instead—a sleek sleight-of-hand. _Blackmail,_ if she wanted to be vulgar about it. 

A favor, extended without her permission. The silent, satisfied expectation in Celene’s gaze—the look of someone who knows what she’s owed. 

And Josephine, sitting in the stuffy blue tent, in the new and insufferable position of _debtor._

“I’m sure I speak on behalf of the Inquisitor herself when I thank you for your magnanimity.” Josephine gently folds her hands in her lap. 

“I’m only doing what’s right. Hardly magnanimous.” One of her perfect smiles. A poet once wrote the curve of Celene’s pale, smiling lips were the compass for how the Maker drew the moon. He was not wrong. “You taught me so, I believe.” 

Josephine smooths her skirts, makes sure her eyes crinkle just so in a sort of surprised delight. “Oh, Your Majesty. I hardly inspire that kind of remembrance.” 

“The pursuit of truth is exceptional work,” Celene says, a little distantly, plucking it from a past conversation. It’s an Antivan idiom, poorly translated. “And the pursuit of betterment, never a burden.” 

In actuality, the Antivan refers to the way a ship, no matter how old and torn by the waves, will continue to sail forward through sea and wind until it falls to pieces. It will sail until the moment it can sail no more. There’s a worthiness in the struggle, a sense of perpetual love that guides the living until they fall dead where they stand. Devotion, in all its passion, romance, and steadfast glory. _No truth outlives devotion_ , Josephine thinks. _No goodness better worth the sea._

She nods slowly, as in awe. But the butchering of the phrasing lights the spark in her heart—anger, real and blood red, curling like smoke in her lungs. 

“He’s not ours to decide, Ambassador. He’s yours.” Celene flutters her fingers. “Perhaps you will consider your burdens, your truth, and think on the future.” 

~~~

The moment Josephine hits the muggy air of the outside, she goes thundering west down the path. A thousand thoughts buzz loudly inside her head, each one clamoring for top attention, and each breath brings a new, stunning realization. A member of the Inquisitor’s inner circle, sitting in Celene’s dungeon? Not only that, but taking the blame for some terrible crime—a crime of bandits, raiders, murderers, destitutes. Or guilty. Whether he is or not makes little difference in the world of rumor, or in the incisive blow to the Inquisition’s reputation. And his guilt turns her stomach all on its own—

No one will cross Josephine when it comes to this Divine, not even Celene. It is no secret Leliana is the least popular choice, but she and Briala thought well of each other, and Josephine assumed that would provide some cover. Vivienne and Cassandra are not—not terrible choices, no, but it must be Leliana. There are no alternatives. 

Her frustration rests lemon-sour on her tongue. If she turned her energy to noise, she’d scream until the earth shook, or drink her weight in wine. But not now. She does not know where Cullen’s tent is, doesn’t stop to ask, only barrels on towards the center of camp. He’ll be near Trevelyan, if the logic is sound. She does not even notice walking through a cloud of road dirt and dust as three Orlesian soldiers beat out their saddleblankets until she’s wiping it away from her face, and trying to shake it from her gown. 

The way it will look. Maker in his city, they will think the Inquisition no better than bandits, throwing their weight and might across the south. At least before there were good deeds to their name. This will spread like wildfire. With every few steps, a new consequence makes itself clear in her mind: their quartering of the Grey Wardens, their alliance with Ferelden, the treaties they’ve used to recruit and demand soldiers from nation after nation. 

She only finds Cullen because he’s out in the open, conversing with a pair of soldiers. They look familiar, though she can’t place exactly, until one of them opens his mouth. He speaks the common tongue with a heavy Orlesian accent, slow and steady, and Cullen cocks his head a little to make sure he can hear every word above the bustle of the camp around them. He’s skinny as a string, a bow taller than he is strapped to his back. 

It’s not until the soldier beside him speaks in the blockiest Fereldan accent she’s ever encountered, “Fino’s telling the truth, ser. There’s a unit on the north side with naught but rakes and pickaxes for weapons. Their chevalier told them to go off and follow the Empress and he’d catch up.”

Fino nods, and then mutters a phrase in Orlesian to him. 

Cullen’s eyebrow goes up. “What did he say?” 

The soldier taps his ear, leans in towards Fino in a practiced gesture. He mutters, “One more time, mate, I’m sorry,” and Josephine remembers—standing in Cullen’s office, translating between two fighting soldiers. It was so long ago the memory is almost as faint as a dream. She clutched violets in her hand for Scout Harding, and Cullen mumbled some advice about letting King Alistair’s mabari lick her fingers. 

It makes her still, just for a moment, and forget the rage propelling her here. 

Fino does it, and his fellow soldier wrinkles his nose. His name is William, she recalls, at the sound of him swearing: “Oh, Maker’s rose-red arse cheeks—” He stops with a jolt. “Pardon, ser. But Fino’s said they don’t even have bloody _shoes._ ” 

Cullen scrawls an order on a tablet. “Give this to Captain Manon, straight away. She’ll get them settled with what they need.” He puts it into Fino’s hand. The hand, Josephine marks, shakes a little. She realizes it for what it is—betrayal, perhaps, against the country he called home. But Cullen clasps his arm in a confident squeeze, one that makes his eyes jerk up from the pages in his hand. 

“You’ve done right by them,” he says, in a voice so serious and true he might be reciting from the Chant of Light. “Don’t fret.” He clasps him on the shoulder, and then William’s leading him away, and they disappear around a corner. She watches them go, until—

“Ambassador.” Cullen nearly startles her, setting his tablet down on a crate. “ I didn’t see—” 

“I must speak to you,” she says quietly. “And it must happen now.” 

Cullen’s brow furrows at the look on her face, the sound of her voice, and he turns, wordlessly opening the flap of the tent behind him. He holds it up so she can duck inside before he follows. The tent shelters a few barrels of something or other, crates shoved in a corner, a few packs lined up against the wall, and a massive pile of bedrolls. It nearly fills the space to the ceiling. There’s not a tremendous amount of room for them to move back and forth, but enough to pace just a little, to walk and turn, walk and turn. 

And then the tent flap drops closed, and he turns to her. He asks, “What’s happened? You look—well.” 

She looks at him sharply. “Yes?” 

“Like someone’s set up camp on your grave,” he says ruefully. A little smirk at the edge of his lips. “Celene not enjoying the trip into the wilderness?”

A pass at humor, gentle and comforting, and it irritates Josephine to a point she did not realize she could achieve. She will not fall into this trap now—affection cannot obscure the magnitude of this, or her goal. She has no patience for frivolity at the moment. 

“You must send a company back,” she informs him tightly, straightening her spine. “They must go to Val Royeaux. The sooner the better.” 

To his credit, he does not lead with _that’s impossible._ Instead he says, “What’s going on?”

“Blackwall languishes in her dungeons.” She makes it come out evenly, as though each word were a piece of fine china set on a table. “He went back with our fine band of Templars to turn himself in for some horrible crime in his past, or to take the blame for it. I don’t know.” 

The news sinks into him, and he stills, the palm of his hand coming to rest on the pommel of his blade. A hard look passes over his eyes—disappointment, keen as a knife—and then disappears. Settles itself. He looks up to meet her, and the matter at hand, like a soldier just told the local host of bandits are approaching fast on horseback. 

So it doesn’t rattle Cullen, not like she thought it would. It calms a little part of her, and irritates in equal measure. “He’s deceived us.” A blank tone of truth and regret. “What’s the crime?” 

“What _isn’t?_ ” she tells him, blinking. Saying it aloud makes it all the more real, and dread surfaces in her heart. “Murder, thievery, the like. Sordid with blood and deceit. The stuff of novels.” 

“Enough for the executioner to swing his axe.” 

“Celene made it sound as though—it was far in his past. Too far, perhaps, for Leliana or I to trace and catch.” 

“It’s not your fault,” he says, his eyebrows knitting together. “It’s what he wanted, and perhaps that’s why he came here.” 

“To make my life a misery?” She gives a ghost of a laugh, and rubs at the dirt on her nose. “As you say, _perhaps._ ” 

“He’s come to make good.” The words are simple. “We’re trying to make the world better. And some—can’t find it on their own. They’ve no instincts for it.” 

“Fascinating,” she says. “Please, tell me more.” 

His own dry chuckle’s not unwelcome. She’s looking for a fight, she realizes, and he’s diligently stepping out of the way of every blow. “It’s not so hard to see why he’d want to be part of this. To carve out a little piece of it for himself.” 

“Redemption.” She scowls, whirling on her heel, and nearly running into him. “From the sound of it, he’s no better than a bandit. Cullen, I don’t care if he’s stolen half the gold in Antiva, he’s murdered innocent people. He never should have come here. I’ve played Wicked Grace with him, sat with him at dinner. I walked the battlements with him every evening when you were at Adamant Fortress.” Speaking these things gives her anger life. It is finally free, in this tent where she can say what she needs to say and not have to bear the burden of it later. He listens, watching her eyes, a soft look on his face. “And I had no idea who he was. No idea at all. A scoundrel in sheep’s clothing.”

A long pause, and she takes a deep breath, a breath she’s been waiting to take since she ran out of Celene’s tent. 

Cullen clears his throat. “Josephine,” he says, “it would not take much, and we could very easily be talking about me.”

She blinks, and thinks, too, of what she knows of Leliana and her past before she joined the Chantry. But such comparisons serve nothing. “I doubt it. It’s not the same.” 

The reaction is automatic. Cullen has never told her in any kind of clear language about his past, but he’s well known enough throughout the country due to his natural, unrelenting proximity to cataclysmic events. The survivor of Kinloch Hold, Knight-Captain under Meredith at Kirkwall. But it is—

He weighs what he wants to say. She can see it behind his eyes, an invisible argument with himself. “No,” he finally, reluctantly agrees. “Not exactly. But—”

“But what?” she demands, and strides away from him. “He’s turned himself in on some kind of _warrant._ He’s a wanted criminal, and he was the first person outside Cassandra and Varric and Solas that Trevelyan had stand by her side.” 

She hoists herself up on one of the barrels lining the wall with an ungainly little lift. If she doesn’t stop moving, she’ll start spinning in place like a trapped bird. Her feet dangle at least a foot from the ground, and one of her slippers, dove-grey and covered in dirt, slips off to fall defeatedly to the tent floor. She sighs. 

Cullen clears his throat, a gentle attempt to push them forward. “What else do you know?” 

“I don’t have the details. She’s had them for days and days and waited so she could tell me herself.” When he cocks his head, she pinches the top of her nose. “ _Leverage_ , so the Inquisition will consider the candidate she wants for Divine.” 

“I take it Leliana’s straight out.” 

“If she has her way, yes.” 

“Wonderful. So Celene didn’t come for her men.” His brow furrows; his tone goes dark. “She came to fight with you.” 

“Quite.” The warmth in the tent stifles, and she brushes away the perspiration gathering on her neck. Cullen watches her hand as it moves. “Now we— _I—_ owe her a favor. She’s made it incredibly clear what she wants.” 

She expects him to ask _which Divine_ or to try to extract more information about Blackwall, but instead his jaw goes tight and he mutters, “You’re Inquisition. You don’t owe her anything.” 

The stiff way the words fall from his lips pauses her. “It’s not so outrageous,” she admits. “If she’d summoned me to Val Royeaux all on my own, I’d have known what was coming from a mile away. Were I in her position…” 

He exhales, slowly, and untangles the hand gripping his sword. He flexes his fingers. Such an obvious show of tension is—an odd relief, in its own way. He’s very calm in the face of calamity—in retrospect, it’s a fine quality. In the moment, Josephine wants someone to vibrate as she does. 

“It’s a smart move,” she finishes. “I’d do the same.” 

“You’d put someone’s life at risk just for a quiet conversation?” he asks, a dull tone of _I don’t believe you, Ambassador_ , turning his voice dry as dust. 

“Don’t make me out as an innocent, ser.” She wrinkles her nose. “Not quite like this, but I make no promises.” 

“Fair enough,” he says, and runs a hand through his hair. Heat has made pomade totally ineffective at this hour of the day. “It’s not—” He stops. 

“What?” she asks, part of her genuinely curious.

He waves his hand. “It’s childish.” 

“Go on.” When he doesn’t, she raises her voice a little. “Don’t make—” 

The sigh makes his shoulders go lax, just for a moment. “It’s not fair,” he murmurs, and rubs the back of his neck. 

It’s an odd word, _fair._ Cullen, who operates totally in the open, means it in the way warmakers do: poor sportsmanship. A violation of the rules of battle. Pawns, stolen by distraction from a chessboard. Cheating. 

“Favors and tricks are my sword and shield, Cullen, and hers, when she can’t order men to arms.” She brushes at some dirt on her sleeve. “Bringing me here is like inviting me to a duel.” She shakes her head. “Staying his execution is—just a blow for me to parry.” 

“You gave her back her country,” he says, and he’s—fuming, under his stalwart exterior. “You gave her back her _life.”_

Of course Cullen sees it that way—the match between Briala and Celene as one of the soul, and not one for better political maneuvering. But, for a man who slogged into battle with a giant for her safety, perhaps matters of the heart are not so far from life and death. 

Underneath her own frustration, she finds herself—susceptible. Josephine is human, after all, and a person who makes her bread and butter from dealing with the illusions, rudeness, sharp edges, and viper-fangs of those in power. Indignance on her behalf, to be defended… 

It pleases her. Wouldn’t it please anyone? She came here for business, to demand he do as she wanted. It hasn’t escaped her notice he’s agreed to nothing. But a soft, wicked voice, one lying in the back of her mind, whispers _is this not also why you found him?_ To find, again, the feeling of a hand of a hand against her back, someone at her side when the world turns its pointed glance her way. 

But he’s not done. “And then she drags you back into the middle of a bloody battlefield as thanks.” He rubs his brow with a gloved thumb. “There’s loyalty for her.” 

Josephine makes a useless gesture. 

He nods tightly. “Do they always treat you like this?” She cocks her head, unsure of who _they_ are. He folds his arms across his chest. “Mangle you about, I mean. Like a—like a pawn.” 

Assuredly, he’s speaking of more than just Celene—Trevelyan too, without naming her. 

“It’s merely the way things are, Cullen.” She would like to lean against his support, a bastion against the world’s idiocies, but— “I’ve played them too, when I needed it. I don’t have the luxury of pretending otherwise.” 

“I only want—” He wrestles with his words again, and finally finds them. “You should have better than being pulled along by the Empress _._ ” He spreads out his hands. “It’s how you fight. All I can do is be your second. But you deserve worthier opponents.” 

And what can she say to that? She agrees. And now he’s looking at her. She should have known better, to drag him inside a place where they could be alone, and they could speak plainly of words they can’t speak outside these thin walls, and he could look at her so.

It’s novel, every time. Today, the longing is plain, but the way Cullen struggles against what he cannot change is fascinating. She found his distaste and anger cumbersome, once upon a time—she still does—but even here she can sense the precision of it. How it points, like a sword tip, back at the world that challenges her. 

He loves justice, and won’t bear watching it tossed aside. It is one of the few things they share. 

She’s caught by how suddenly she wants him near her, how far away the other side of the tent feels when it’s hardly any room at all. They are alone for the first time in days and days, and it’s though they both remember at the same time. 

If she were standing, she might grapple him against the bedrolls, just as he did at her desk before they left Skyhold. The temptation lingers in her muscles, sore from little use.

“Cullen,” she says, in such a way that he glances towards the door, as though someone could walk in at any moment. He learns well and quickly, to divine what she means with the tone. 

“We are—at business.” His eyes dart away, and the corner of her lip begins to turn up. 

“Come here.” 

“We’re speaking of business. I don’t want to—distract.” He shakes his head. But, driven by a bout of sudden, energetic anxiety, he follows her direction, closes the few feet of distance between them. He stands there, restless, for a single breath before he goes to one knee with a quickness she didn’t expect, plucks her shoe from where it rests on the ground. 

“We were. And now we’ll put it aside, for a moment,” she replies wryly, just before his fingers find her heel, and it’s the first time anyone’s touched her in days. He slides it on, and his thumb lingers on the smooth curve of her ankle bone when he looks back up at her. 

Oh, a mistake. A hundred unbidden images flash across her mind—her heel, balanced against his shoulder, for one. Him, kneeling at her feet in one of Skyhold’s boltholes, soaked to the skin. Maker, they’re alone in a tent stuffed to the brim with bedrolls, of all things. Anyone else, she’d know for sure: pure manipulation, easy to spot and cheap as a port. But Cullen’s guileless nature is his saving grace. He doesn’t have half an idea of what he’s doing. 

“Is that something we should do?” Confirmed. 

_I’ve missed you_ , Josephine thinks, a soothing little flame beneath her breast. _Maker and all his servants help me._ She licks her lips. “To me,” she murmurs, and he does, instantly. 

When Cullen thinks too much, his kisses turn molasses-sweet, as though everything he learned about the act he parsed from the perfect union between a woman and her god. There’s always something sweet about him, even when he forgets himself. Josephine has kissed men who feel nothing of the like, and she prefers this, the way he responds to demands. Josephine nips at his lip, hard enough to provide direction— _don’t coddle me_ , she thinks wildly—and like any good soldier, he responds to the order with vigor. She tugs at his hands, guides them to her waist, and he holds her steadily, as though she might slip up into the air and away. 

How often has she seen him in the yards dueling with Cassandra, or tossing up dust with his soldiers? How strong he is, and he bows so easily to her touch. The temptation to make him bend slides through her with dizzying force. His chestplate presses against her, cold and unpleasant, but she’ll bear it for the sake of him. He tastes of salt and water, smells of dirt, sweat, and the kind of oil used to keep a leather saddle in good shape. When he pulls back a little, she gives chase. It’s an endless pleasure to surprise him. 

Dangerous, this. How easy and lovely it feels, like sinking below the surface of the churning sea. No more bustle and shouting from the docks, the harsh cries of seagulls. No one looking at her. No one waiting on the next perfect word to drop from her mouth. Only shared breath in this insufferably stuffy tent. 

Cullen’s hand finds her knee, rests carefully atop layers of muslin gown until she strokes along the pale stubble of his jaw, curls her fingers in his hair. He squeezes, his thumb pressing in-between to press against fabric and the soft flesh beneath, and she makes an unbidden little noise under her breath. He freezes—her hand curls around his wrist instantly to keep him there, to reassure him. His fingers slide between her knees, his gloves catching on fabric. Such a harmless little touch; the position is hardly compromising by even Fereldan standards, but it’s been long enough it makes gooseflesh rise along her thighs, and if he moves his hand, she’s sure she’ll die. 

“You’re so quiet.” It’s the first thing she can think of, when he breaks the kiss to glance down at his own boldness. 

He blushes soundly, an unguarded pink on his neck that surely—surely—goes down beneath his armor. “Is that a problem?” 

“No.” She raises an eyebrow, a little wickedly. “A challenge, I think.” 

It’s a fervent desire, when he’s covered in so many buckles, to yank him to and fro how she wants. She can curl her fingers the chestplate’s edge, keep him close, her fingers nestled between steel and leather. And when she does, she makes note of the hitch in his breath that follows. When she pulls him close, she catches the next hitch between her lips, a little pearl to carry on her tongue. 

Some—time passes. Enough time to leach some of her frustration and tension from her morning with Celene, from the entire trip, if she’s truthful. She lets her forehead rest against the clunky metal of his chestplate. His nose presses into her hair. 

She does not want to move. The most dangerous part of the game. So she pulls away quickly, early, even though even just one more moment of it would satisfy. She has already given into distraction most despicably. And then—strike, light, match. 

“Business,” she says, and doesn’t bother hiding the note of regret in her voice. It comes out a little muffled. He releases her, that hand sliding away from her knee, and she drops down from the barrel. Smooths her skirts. How long have they been inside the tent? She has no idea, but is sure outside at least four different petty officers are keeping a very exact time. 

Josephine asks, “So who will you send to collect him?” once he’s situated himself on the other side of the tent. 

When Cullen shakes his head, all the exasperation floods back in one fell swoop. He says, “Not yet.” 

“No one?” She narrows her eyes. “I thought you understood we must act quickly.” 

“As soon as the battle ends, I’ll send a company to Val Royeaux. A proper honor guard.” He nods in promise. “I’ll go myself, if you think it’ll help.” 

Not good enough, not good enough. “The risk against our reputation is too high.” 

“And if I’m to decide the risk here—” He raises his arm to indicate the camp, the soldiers, and the enormous battle they march towards, “it’s not worth it. We’d save two weeks at most. I can’t.” 

“The full might of one country, and our forces, and you refuse to find a way?” 

“You yourself said we’ve almost no detail to go on. I’m not sending anyone, not yet.” He raises an eyebrow. “These men joined the Inquisition to defend their homes. I won’t snatch it from them to escort a common criminal back to Skyhold.” 

“You _could._ ”

“I could,” he agrees. “But I won’t.” 

She rubs a hand over her face. “I never thought I’d hear this from you. To think Commander Cullen of the Inquisition refuses work over _appeasement—_ ”

“I—Josephine.” He speaks calmly, evenly. “Everyone, every _unit_ here has a purpose. You know how badly this could turn if we lose. You heard the soldiers outside. The Orlesian army is in shambles from the civil war. Half the chevaliers don’t care if we walk away dead or alive. I weigh the risk here. And I can’t spare them. Not now.” He sighs. “But soon. When we know more.” 

Fury, born of righteous indignation, rekindles in her chest. “Every second he sits there is a mark on our good name.” 

He nods, with the weight of regret in his eyes. “I know, and I’m sorry,” he says. “Blackwall, sitting in Celene’s dungeons, is far safer than anyone here will be once we’re in the Wilds.” A little exhale. “Safer than the Inquisitor, or myself, or even you.” 

The words manifest themselves on her tongue instantly, too fast for her to stop them. “You—you are _punishing_ me,” she snaps, “for daring to come here.” 

A flash of hurt glances across his face, quick as a slap. It disappears almost instantly. 

Somewhere, underneath her anger—at herself for being played by Celene, at Cullen for not acquiescing to her will, at _Blackwall_ , for putting them in this dire strait—she regrets those words, if only for the mark they made. 

There’s a moment of silence, then, before he speaks. “He won’t stay there,” he promises again, sturdy as iron. “Battles turn so quickly, Josephine. Everything will go wrong, even if we win. It might all depend on how fast a squadron can move, or if we can outlive an ambush. The moment we’re clear, I’ll send them north.” 

Cullen, for once in his existence, doesn’t proffer obstinacy. He doesn’t shake his head, grind his jaw, huff and puff. No snap of anger, no petty and stupid remark. No marching out of the tent and back into the fray in bitter silence. Nothing. 

He’s—being patient. And in the moment, she can’t stand it. 

“You can weigh an outcome better than I can,” Cullen says. “I can’t compromise it. When we have—” 

“Fine,” she says, dusting off her hands, tone flat as the ground under their feet. “More for me to tend, once all the dust has settled.” 

Whether it’s a fair statement or not doesn’t matter. It’s that she can say it at all, here in this place where she’s only Josephine, and not a smiling pillar of flesh. He makes a little sound of protest—it’s almost a comfort, more than anything else—but doesn’t try to stop her as she whirls out of the tent, the linen flapping behind her. 

~~~

When Celene’s aide finds her in the tent, he delivers only a roll of parchment with a simple declaration of temporary pardon for the purpose of delivering _Thom Rainier, criminal_ into the hands of the Inquisition. No other details are given. Josephine almost makes the mistake of asking him just where the rest of his delivery is, before realizing this is just another play in the game. Celene will call on her again, and more detail will undoubtedly serve as reward for cooperation. 

The childishness of it makes Josephine hold back a high, humorless laugh. For all her obsession with removing Leliana’s candidacy for the Divine, she has forgotten all her ears and eyes. Josephine writes a quick note to her dear friend—a few coded words about the nature of the situation, and a request for information coming out of Val Royeaux. 

The letter goes off, and a few days there will be plenty for them to talk about. When they finally camp, Leliana will be there. She does not think of Cullen until this letter, and then three more, delivered by Calla, are complete. By then, the night is dark and she reads by a stub of a candle. On the open road, once her correspondence is complete, her work must stop. There are no mountains of papers for her to flick through, no treaties to review. 

All that’s left is Laurien’s unopened letter, placed in her hand by Calla just as they left Skyhold. In a bout of resignation, she opens Laurien’s letter with a careful tear, and pores over the first two lines. 

_Sister mine,_

_Hitching our wagon to a big Fereldan steer, are we?_

She is in her tent, alone, and all the better if no one hears her swear aloud. She folds up the letter and tosses it back on her bedroll. She busies herself with a note to one of her contacts in Tantervale for all of four minutes before she reaches for it once more. 

_You’ve worn out your ability to surprise me. You can thank your dreary mountain home for stealing all your trumpets and horns. But no brother of yours, Josephine, could restrain himself at this choice passage from your last letter:_

And Josephine finds herself reading her own words, written weeks ago after certain impassioned declarations in public and in snow, perhaps after a few late cups of wine in her office as the candles burned low. Calla has a miserably efficient habit of addressing and sending all her completed letters left on her desk, and a letter Josephine had no intention of actually sending to her brother found it’s way home. 

_I quote: “I demand you tell me how you plot the future. How do you defend against affection? I find it growing in me without permission. When I consider the ledger, the deal is complicated at best. The reasons are strong enough, I suppose, with evidence, but I fear the reasons_ not _slide deep as ships wrecked at the bottom of Antiva Bay. And yet, I cannot pause the course. It defies all logic. Help me understand.”_

She steadies herself with a drink from the waterskin, ignoring the furious blush growing on her cheeks—only from the steadily rising humidity, and never from her own unabashed declarations. But the next lines—

_The truth of the matter is—there’s nothing._

She can feel the heaviness of his change in tone as though he were standing beside her, his habit of looking over the tops of his reading spectacles when he means to be sincere about the sharpness of truth he is about to deliver. Josephine can admit her intentions to herself. The demand for Laurien to convince her, written with one goal in mind: convince of what she wanted, not of what was truth. But things change. 

A little water from the skin in her hand, pressed to the back of her neck. She holds the letter up to the light, exhales, and reads on. 

_You and I are the same—we consider odds and make lists of all the reasons why and why not. Perhaps he is steadfast and loyal, but that comes with a certain hard-set nature of his ways. You relish your battles, but they all-too-quickly descend into wars you have no intention of fighting. He is callous and ignorant, or does not listen, or you do not listen. Anything and everything._

_You and I are the same, and there is a concept at work we have never before faced. I’ve had the joy of encountering it first, it seems, so here’s what you asked of me: there is an affection that reaches beyond the consideration of why and why not. It’s not without price. Instead, the price no longer matters._

_It comes and settles in without asking. No negotiation. It’s simply there, without condition. I think that’s how it is with real tenderness. It closes the ledger and throws it away, perhaps straight into the bay, or careening off that awful mountain of yours. Into oblivion._

_Don’t confuse it for absolution, or forgiveness, or even a decision on whether to stay. Those are choices, and yours still. (I think Yvette would describe it as something atrocious, like knowing the sun will always rise and set, but I prefer—knowing solid ground under your feet. Something to land on.) The point is—it doesn’t need a reason._

Her fingers tremble. Just a little. Just enough to flutter the paper, enough to lower it to her lap and wring her hands together. How he avoids the word at heart. How they both avoid it, for her sake. The ground could open up beneath her and swallow her without regard, and she would not notice in the moment. 

_I want to tell you, Josephine, more than anything: it’s all right for a thing to not make sense._

_It will keep happening, over and over again, until you can’t stand it. It’s natural, I think, and infuriating. It needs time, and trust, and talking, probably—with the party in question, instead of your stupid little brother in Antiva City. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who has ample reason to be sure of herself. And you know precisely what I’m going to say next._

A lump rises in Josephine’s throat, painful and impossible to swallow. 

_You know, my dearest friend, whether you want him or not. You don’t need to ask me._

~~~

A day passes, and then another. Haze clouds the sky when they’re not so far from the Wilds. In the morning—if the sun rises, Josephine does not see it. They are saddled quickly before marching off with the precession, and she’s drawn into thought, rather than conversation. Briony and Calla ride next to each other, behind her, as is their habit. Josephine knows their conversational habits by now too—Calla going on and on, and Briony listening with polite, and sometimes rapt, attention. 

They cross a wide, shallow river. They do it slowly, which means a lot of waiting around as carts and horses and druffalo ford and drag their bounties across. The horses flick their tails, and the morning humidity makes everyone’s clothes stick to them. 

But as they wait, Calla sits quietly. The silence should concern Josephine—it’s unlike her. She thinks of turning, beckoning her up, even though her own tiredness complains at the thought. But before she can look over her shoulder, Briony speaks. 

She never raises her voice unless she needs to get someone’s attention over the wind and the rain, and her natural speaking voice is a low rumble, a soothing constancy to remind Josephine of waves lapping at rocks in the morning. And now, she wields it gently as a hand. 

“You still pinched about yesterday?” Briony asks, casually as _do you want a sip from my waterskin?_

Calla huffs. “I only wish you wouldn’t talk about your life so lightly.” 

“I don’t.” 

“You _do_.” A little snap. “Acting like I’m some ruffled chicken for caring whether you live or not. I’m not some sort of stone.” 

Briony gives a sigh—a laugh, perhaps, thought better of. “Maker strike me down if I mistook you for a rock.” 

“Not at all.” Calla’s voice tightens. “You only presume I can be rolled aside when I say something that makes you think for more than a second at a time.” 

Tense and uncertain quiet. Josephine could spot a lover’s quarrel at two hundred paces even before she lived through two dozen of them herself. It’s an awful silence, one that pools like murky water between them all. 

“Look,” Briony begins, voice low enough Josephine can barely hear. “My first battle was when all the darkspawn showed up at Denerim’s doorstep. I’d been training at the Chantry there. I was sixteen. It’s occupied my every waking moment since.” 

Calla doesn’t offer any kind of acknowledgement, but Josephine knows she’s listening. 

“Ever since I picked up a sword, my life’s come second.” Clinking of armor, like a shrug. “Lot of men out here, they’re the same. It’s what you have to do, to stand between evil and other people.” 

“Yes,” Calla says, tightly, miserably, “thank you, you’re very brave—”

“I don’t let myself think much about what comes next.” Briony heads her off at the pass. “I don’t like thinking about the things I could miss.” 

It’s an odd way to phrase the sentiment. Josephine adjusts the reins in her hands, tries not to obviously lean back to catch whatever words fly next between them. 

“You won’t miss me if Corypheus throws you down a well.” Calla tries to hide her emotion in tart sarcasm, but what comes out is—strained with worry. “You’ll be dead, and you won’t have to deal with a single thing that comes after.” 

A long, thoughtful silence. “I used to think if that happened, I’d say, _I did the best I could._ ” Briony sounds a little distance. “Now—” She stops. “The things I wanted, I only got to imagine them. I never touched them, never lived them, never made them more than...”

“Possibility.” She hears Calla swallow. 

“I don’t want to join the Maker. I don’t, no matter what you think.” When she pauses, Josephine’s heart aches at the uncertainty in her tone. “There’s things in the world worth dying for, probably. But I don’t think I’ve lived any of them yet.” 

When Calla finally answers, she speaks around a lump in her throat. “You ought to make some advancements in that regard.” 

“I’m trying. Now let me do what I do best.” A little pause. “Or you can ride alongside me into the fray and make sure nothing gnaws my leg off.” 

“Don’t try to make me laugh.” 

“I saw what you did to that assassin,” Briony says. “Tough little thing. I ought to give you my blade, see what mess you can make of those red bastards.” 

Calla makes a helpless little sound, somewhere between a sob and a bit of laughter. And then everything—splinters. Out of the forest, a whirl of metal and red crashes into the side of the line. 

Josephine is unable to recollect or sort much of what happens next. The soldiers in their group react quick as lightning, circling them in a protected center. The sound is—unholy. Singing metal, orders barked at a blinding speed, and howls—howls to strike them deaf in horror. Josephine’s seen pictures of the Red Templars now, and stared at their earlier forms in Haven long ago. These fight quick as shadows, raw swords of lyrium protruding from their shoulders. They scream when killed, awful inhuman sounds that spook the horses. Their blood leaves marks in the iron spears. It’s the noise that imprints itself in her brain. She has watched fighting, read the histories of war long ago, and none come close to capturing its wretched symphony. 

It swallows her whole. No matter how many soldiers stand between her and their attackers, she cannot escape it. 

She grips her horse, who stands still in place—tensely trying to run but either frozen in fear or better trained than Josephine ever imagined. They go down, one by one—until they’re hit from the other side, and everything blurs. The noise around them roars, and Josephine can barely see beyond the backs of those turned in front of her, pointing pikes in defense. Briony’s gone, and Calla grips the reins of both their horses, pulling them as close as she can to be another line between Josephine and the rest of the action. And, oh—Cullen is there, she can see him with his sword and shield, the ruff of fur on his shoulders, his face in an unrecognizable snarl as his blade cleanly slides through the chest cavity of one of the Templars covered in lyrium, a scraggly monster so far from human as to be unrecognizable—and then he’s gone in the swathe of them, Inquisition and the enemy, and Briony’s broadsword arcs high into the air, catching the light as it swings down like the arm of a god— 

She will learn later these were scouting groups, inspired by their pause at the river to try to split up the line, take a few easy pickings for morale. Some of the soldiers will call it a sign of pure desperation, others will shake their head. A flex of strength, to show how many expendable bodies they have at their command. Throw Templars at the army, and see what they do with them. Cullen waited on the other side of the river, making sure everyone got across ( _everyone_ , Josephine knows, sounds like an excuse). 

But all of a sudden it’s over, almost as quickly as it began. The noise disappears, recedes into the air as though it never existed at all. No one lies dead, but only so far as she can see. But they did not come anywhere near her. She is safe. Everything spins on its axis, and all the blood drains away from her face. Her head drops to rest against the neck of her horse, because the air can’t fill her lungs fast enough and she doesn’t want to fall off. Her hands grip the reins like a lifeline, and it’s not until someone physically lifts her down from her saddle that she lets go. 

She only walks a few steps before the hands make her sit, and she perches on a mossy, damp boulder. A gloved hand on the back of her neck gently presses her head down until it rests between her knees. “Breathe.” The voice is quiet, certain, familiar. 

She tries to do it—it takes some attempts, and the world starts to go grey at the edges. But she manages one breath, and then another. 

“You’re safe,” Cullen murmurs in her ear. “They’re all safe. We didn’t lose anyone.” His thumb rubs slow circles on her nape, soothing. 

“I—” she tries, raising her head, but the world whirls too dizzily for her to say much more. 

“ _Breathe,_ Josie,” he says, and it’s the name that clears her head, a pinpoint of light through the fog. She makes herself take in air, deep gulps until the dizziness stops rattling the world around her. 

When she manages to raise her head, he is there, crouched in front of her. One of his knees planted in the mud. They smell of river-water. Dirt on his cheek. The brown of dried blood, flecked on his armor. 

His face is itself again. _You looked so different, a moment ago_. The words, braced by relief, nearly come crashing out of her mouth. But she swallows them. 

She begins with, “I’ve never,” and then the fight is too close, too strange to describe properly. 

But he understands. “I hoped you wouldn’t. I hoped we were big enough in number to—prevent this sort of skirmish.” He takes a breath. “I started running as soon as I saw them, I—” And then a look crosses his face, as though the wind’s been knocked from his chest, as though everything that happened, and could have happened, has only just hit him in its entirety. Bleak realization, dread rising in his throat. 

“I didn’t know if I’d make it,” he says, voice hardly louder than a whisper. “All I wanted was to be fast enough. All I—” 

He looks just as lost as she feels, and when she reaches for him, he wraps his arms around her so tightly it nearly takes the breath from her. She hides her face against his collar, loops her arms about his neck. His chestplate will make a wrinkle on her cheek, and it’s much too hot to cling to one another like this, but it’s a… She struggles for a word. A wonder, to feel so safe. To know being here, alive and close as they can get, makes him feel the same. 

Josephine closes her eyes. He does not tremble, only gives one long, plaintive sigh of relief. It fills his whole body, like a prayer, and when he exhales, the feeling of it cloaks them from the world. She forgets the sound of horses pawing at the ground, and the distant bustle of soldiers picking up the pieces after a battle. None of it matters. 

He holds her in his arms for such a long time. There’s a moment where she thinks he’ll say something, muttered in her ear, but he only presses his cheek against her hair. It’s then Josephine realizes there’s nothing he can say, nothing he can promise, even if it’s all he wants to do. No vows about how nothing will touch her, or how she will be safe from danger under the care of the Inquisition. It would be a lie, and he won’t commit himself to deceit, even if it would comfort them both. This is the business of life and death, and protection. 

All he can offer her is—himself, and what his body can do, and what his spirit is willing to give. When he turns his head, presses his lips to her temple, tender as the way he said her name, she understands it for the first time. His world is one without control, and he has honed himself to live and react to that fact, even when she stands at its violent center. _You have me. All that I can endure._ It’s an offer she barely comprehends, to be a shield between her and whatever comes next, to promise every possible inch of his life. It’s—enormous, a vow so full it deflects the gaze of the sun, and enough to make her grip him so tightly his armor creaks. 

When she remounts Speckle, his hands cradle her muddy foot as he gives her a leg up. He stands by her side as they rejoin the line, until she finds her place at the center of everything, his hand resting on her ankle. He follows her as the march takes them forward across the water, which only comes up to his knees. And then for at least half a mile, and the idle talk from the soldiers around them resumes, and they’re far from the river. 

They don’t speak, because there’s no need for it. Cullen’s disregard for whoever might see them is—new, for Josephine. All of her partners, even those not so entwined with the Game, preferred discretion. Cullen does not seem to care who sees them, or how many they number, or to worry how his subordinates might use it against his command. All things she has considered, puzzled over, many, many times. 

She does not think of Cullen as _confident._ But he has nothing to hide. He walks at her side as though he knows he belongs there. 

“Go on,” she says quietly, with a wave of her hand. “I’m fine.” 

He looks up. “If you’re sure.” His face says, _I’ll stay._

How easy it would be, to reach down and run her fingers through his hair. Sweat, humidity, and splashing about in the river has released its curls. But it only makes her wind the reins around her hands instead. 

She shakes her head, and watches him go until he’s too small to see any longer, a little dot amongst their numbers. 

~~~

The afternoon hangs over them, wet and muggy. In the aftermath of the morning, she’s tired enough that the rocking of the horse beneath her would lull her to sleep, were her seat not so uncomfortable. An ache persists at the small of her back, and even Varric’s fallen quiet. She’s seen soldiers lie along the neck of a horse and sleep. But she’d never heard the end of it. 

Trevelyan, all of a sudden, parts her way through the soldiers to find her 

Her hair sticks to her forehead. “Heard they tried to break the line here,” she says. “Are you all right?”

“I am.” Out of the corner of her eye, Varric falls back on his pony, making some comment about a stick caught in Calla’s hair. When she can’t quite find it, Briony reaches over with a deft hand and plucks it out in one fluid movement. “The soldiers did well. And the commander was here.” 

“Good. We call the fast ones _shadows._ They’re devilishly quick. Took us a long time to get the better of them in the Emprise. ” 

Josephine nods. It’s very odd, to be looking down at her from horseback. Odder still, the conversation. She wonders, suddenly, if she and Cullen were overheard in the tent, and someone has already told her Blackwall sits in Celene’s dungeons. But those words don’t come. 

Trevelyan presses a thumb into her shoulder, rolls it as though it’s stiff. Tugs at her gloves, black leather with silverite stitching. Spelled against the cut of a blade, but light as paper compared to a metal gauntlet. The bill crossed Josephine’s desk. She hopes they’ve been worth every sovereign. 

She’s nervous, she realizes, just before Trevelyan clears her throat. “I’ve a favor to ask you.” 

“Of course.”

Trevelyan straightens, her hands clasped behind her back, and says, “Not in terms of the Inquisition. We are—Josephine, we’re something like friends, aren’t we?” 

Diplomats collect friends just as soldiers collect casualties. Josephine is never without friends. There are exceptions—Varric, and their games of diamondback. Leliana, who is as dear to her as her own blood. And there is the matter of her and Cullen, who are—kissing, decidedly more than _friends—_

 

But that hardly matters. Trevelyan wants her confidence. So Josephine says, with a little smile, “Definitions are rather limited, don’t you think?” 

Trevelyan almost laughs. She can see it bubble in her throat, and then watches her swallow it down with a pained smile. She looks bewilderingly young again, adrift in a sea of soldiers and burdened by incredible circumstances. The part of Josephine who knows herself as an older sister sighs, shakes her head ruefully. 

“Now,” she continues, “what’s troubling you?” 

“The commander’s in good standing with you?” Trevelyan attempts some diplomacy herself. Josephine almost chokes. “Sorry. You’re together? There aren’t a lot of words for it that don’t make me stumble for nonsense.” 

This is one of Varric’s little informative plots, Josephine thinks. Wrangling Trevelyan into his games. Has he pulled back just far enough to overhear her confirm it? Low, but effective. “We are,” she says.

Now Trevelyan does smile, small but warm. “I—congratulations?” She makes an amused sound. “I don’t know what the polite thing to say is. Unexpected, but then I doubt the Iron Bull casts his bets lightly.” 

“Casts his _bets?_ ” Somewhere behind her, Varric makes a noise. Oh, there will be words about this. 

“Morale’s important,” Trevelyan reminds her, brushing some of her auburn hair out of her face. “ _So_ important, in these dark, doom-filled times—” But then she can’t keep her face straight, and laughs, sweet and quiet. 

“Happy to be of use to the Inquisition,” is Josephine’s wry reply. 

Trevelyan rolls one of her shoulders again, gives her a sideways glance. The glance—that’s the moment it turns. It’s too sharp. The hesitance isn’t true. More like a pause in a play, when the mummer’s ready to say her last, stinging line. 

It’s too well placed. And before Josephine can say anything else, Trevelyan glances about, lowers her voice. “Then you know—he’s quit.” 

“Yes.” Certainly not the time to speak about it, surrounded by soldiers under his command. She curls the reins in her hand. The many ears about them no longer seem like beacons of rumor, but something far worse. “Inquisitor—”

“It’s not easy.” Trevelyan does not hear her, or does not care. “It’s life in a bottle. Mages use it to replenish what they already make, but it gives Templars—everything. All their abilities. Without it, they’re just any other soldier.”” 

“I understand what it—” 

“Can you imagine suddenly not having it any longer? It’d be like losing an arm.”

_Enough of this._ “When we _camp_ , Inquisitor, we can—”

“Josephine,” she says, sharply, “He’s enticing my Knight-Lieutenant into following him.” 

The statement is so absurd Josephine must fight back a laugh. Cullen could not entice a cup into letting him drink from the rim. “I don’t know anything about it.” That, at least, is true. 

“You know he’s been sick.”

This second attempt at a knife’s twist in two days makes Josephine’s hands clench her reins. It floods her senses: how her stomach knotted reading Trevelyan’s report of how he jumped at shadows; the taste of bitterness under her tongue when she’d realized he’d hidden it from her. The flesh memory of stroking Cullen’s hair as he finally admitted he could never return there. The realization currently setting her mind alight: he’s only admitted a fraction of what he might endure in a day, a week, a year. Frustration (with herself, with him, and especially with the situation) provides a crystal clarity. The second attempt at—she will say it, even though it’s dramatic—blackmail in the past forty-eight hours cannot go unquestioned. 

Besides, Celene is a master; Trevelyan is not. 

And more, she grows impatient. “Please, speak to him.” The bewildered Trevelyan reappears in the pause. She moves her hand to touch Josephine’s mount, but thinks better of it. “There’s no need—” 

“Inquisitor,” says Josephine, carefully as she can, heart thrumming against her ribs, “I’m not that sort of diplomat.” 

The silence between them goes cold; Trevelyan looks up at Josephine. Her eyes carry a fraction of her usual fire. The ruse is tossed aside. It disturbs Josephine that she can’t tell how much of it was genuine. She hasn’t thought of Trevelyan as someone who needed her full guard—how far she’s come, since they learned a waltz in her office in between trips to the Hinterlands. She’s not a girl any longer. The Inquisition has reforged her, for better or worse. 

“Very well,” Trevelyan says, and nods towards the front of the line. “Stay safe. I’ll see you when we make camp in the Wilds.” And then she goes, quickly as she came. 

Out of eye and earshot, in the small, pale silence that follows, Josephine makes her thoughts quiet, pushes down the dread curling in her stomach. Varric, somewhere behind her, resumes telling Calla some lewd Kirkwaller legend. And that’s that. 

Josephine almost allows herself to admit it—the thought nearly escapes her on a sigh: _I should not be here._ But no—no. Even coming close to the thought is enough to rile her, to push back against the forces trying to turn her for their own gain. How dare they. How dare they assume she can be played, that she can be _used for ends._ How dare they assume she’d do such a thing. 

The horror rising in the back of her mind—her relationship with Cullen, targeted so explicitly by their commanding officer—is buried underneath her utter indignation. Neither of them are puppets. And to think she would allow this small, imperfect, _magnificent_ partnership growing between the two of them to be picked apart for someone else’s benefit is—

Exactly what she feared, in all honesty. And it’s already reared its ugly head. 

Even fumbling through the wilderness and surrounded by those who seek to use her as a tool, she can find her element. Celene’s meddling, and now this inexcusable attempt at manipulation, refine her frustration into an energy she hasn’t felt since trudging out of Skyhold more than a week ago. It’s the fatal mistake when dealing with peacemakers: the assumption of collaboration, of docility. They think Josephine’s heart is movable, when they haven’t the faintest idea of where it lies, or who it carries in its care. It cannot stand. 

Josephine rights herself in the saddle and makes her own vow to the wide sky, to the wind carrying all the sounds of a raucous army march. Nothing will touch them, not while she breathes. With the focus of a rapier’s tip, she looks to the endless line of soldiers and horses winding ahead of her and thinks, _en garde._


End file.
